


This Ain't Love

by AgapantoBlu



Series: Take Care of Me [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relatioship, AkaKuro/KuroAka, Akashi is NOT the abuser, Haizaki is a bastard, M/M, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, There's a lot of bad things in here, Violence, be careful, mental issues, please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:56:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 58,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aomine was called to the hospital by Midorima, he wasn’t expecting the morbid scenery he found himself before, he wasn’t expecting to see one of his friends reduced to a broken empty doll by someone who was playing the ‘good-boyfriend’ farce to cover for his depravity. </p><p>Daiki and Shintarou won’t take any of this shit, none of the Generation of Miracles will, but helping someone we really care for is not always that easy.</p><p>***</p><p>[This story is mainly AkaKuro -with hints of MidoTaka and AoKise- but putting aside the abusive relationship (which means, no, Akashi is not abusing Kuroko, okay?!).]</p><p>***</p><p>"Take Care of Me" Series - I Story - Akashi Centric</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EvesMagick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvesMagick/gifts).



 

**__Prologue__ **

 

 _Haizaki smiles, not with one of his usual grins but a real smile, vague as his eyes run down the light furrow of the spine, on the pale skin, the tired flesh, of the body under him. That same body that he’s keeping still by grabbing his right side with a hand and drowning its head on the pillow with the other, pushing harshly with his finger a bit under the eye and his thumb bent with a phalange keeping open the dry cavern and shallow – just_ maybe _for the kisses –mouth of the other. The albino had his dreadlocks cut and returned to his old natural colour, he has two piercings on his right ear tip that suit him and would make him really charming if not for his eyes, filled with that crazy and ill light that seemsthe shining of the fangs of a raging wild, disobedient dog. But he’s not a dog._  

_He’s not as he pushes even deeper in the flesh holding him, ripping a jerk out of it, and he’s not as he slips his nails in the skin and drags the scratches to the middle of the shivering hairless backunder his chest **.** He’s not as he releases in his partner **,** and he’s not as he puts his face in the hair between the fingers he’s still keeping on the side of the other’s head to hold against the pillow **,** or as he smells deeply the harsh flavour of sweat and sex with a disharmonic note of iron that should not be there **.** He’s not even as he licks away a blood drop falling from the tail of an eyebrow to the cheekbone. He’s not a dog; he’s morbidly human._

_He exits slowly from the body he has just ravished and stares at it from his knelt position betweenthe other’s legs **,** still opened and abandoned helplessly. He’s little, so little that it looks feminine, childish - he’s never really grown up since when he had met him for the first time, eight years ago, at the beginning of their middle school times – and he’s even snowy. Not pale, pale would mean a worn out colour while his skin looks really white, like snow and death, maybe even because of the brilliant shade of hair – now all ruffled – and eyes. Haizaki looks for the latter **,** sustaining his body on the right palm and stretching forward, towering above that petite and exhausted face stained in sweat and decorated with constellation of purple and blackish and yellowish stars. His eyelids are open, but the irises empty of light and the pupils aren’t focusing, lost into a confused nothingness in between the bed and the room’s wall. His half-open lips don’t move._

_Haizaki’s left hand snaps, fits under the other’s jaw **,** and his fingers like pincers grab the already hollow cheeks as if threatening to pierce them. The eyelids close immediately, and his teeth are clenched, but the face accompanies that movement and turnsbackward to face the partner’s._

_Haizaki smiles at that meekness and rewards it by pressing his lips against the littler ones, but he pulls back immediately, disappointed in the roughconsistency of the other’s chipped mouth and for the savour of dried blood. He lets go of his grip rudely and gets down the bed staggering a bit – he must have drunk too much beer – andthen he reaches for the fridge, opposite to the bed and next to the kitchenette of their one-room apartment. He takes another can, opens it **,** and drinks half of the alcohol in a single mouthful. He gulps it down, satisfied, and when he turns **,** he does it while cleaning his lips with the back of his hand, but he stops upon seeing the figure on the bed, still motionless, prone, in his stasis._

_“Oi!” he growls, noticing the stains – white, yes, but even red – on the sheets right under his partner’s waist, “Move that ass and go get clean! This place’s already a mess like this without you worsening it all.”_

_Haizaki curses, not caring about being the only culprit of said ‘mess’ and he keeps on drinking, but the figure on the bed, silent, lays its little hand palms on the mattress and slowly, painfully, he obeys._

_He gets up and drags his legs bent under himself and kneels **.** He doesn’t dare to sit. He slips down the bed backwardly, like a kid who’s not tall enough, but he does it to hold onto something steady **,** and thus he never detaches his hands from the mattress for long moments, whole minutes that he needs to convince his legs that their duty is to hold on, sustain him and keep him up **,** and not to spread themselves and let him fall on the ground. He trembles, but in the end lets goof his grip on the sheets **,** and as soon as he straightens up a bit **,** he feels the warm and viscous fluids running down his inner tights. He’s not steady, not on his feet nor in his mind, but he turns and hurries up as best as he can to the right wall and the bathroom door. The door to outside is just two meters on the right, in the recess between the drywalls encircling the sanitaries and the wall of the kitchenette, but he doesn’t even spare it a glance, doesn’t even think about it. He’s not looking for an escape._

_He enters the bathroom and the shower-bow, turns on the water without even bothering with trying to regulate the temperature because Shougo had showered just a few moments ago and he has surely finished the hot supply, and then he turns._

_He has not pulled the curtain **,** and the mirror above the sink sends him a snowy face that looks like porcelain painted in amotive of purple flowers, _ bruises _, that makes precious the left eye and temple and the right cheekbone, the left jaw to the mouth corner where now shines the crimson ruby of a familiar-looking crust. He blinks and finds his mind filled with two opposite thoughts, the one denigrating his poor face and the other shyly happy, almost proud, because_ Shougo has wanted him despite that look.

 _He doesn’t love Haizaki, he knows it. For as much as he keeps on trying desperately, he still loves someone else, someone he lost forever almost five years before, but the albino is all he needs: he takes care of him, had opened his eyes when nobody else would, given him a house and hospitality when he had been left completely alone. He even loves him in his own way **,** or at least loves having power over him. That is not the same thing **,** but its enough. Sure, sometimes he exaggerates, he drinks a bit too much **,** and then he raises his voice,_ raises his hands _, demands and takes what he wants without asking **,** and _ it hurts _, but he can stand it. He can. He’s not as frail as he looks **,** and he knows that after all he can’t really ask too much for himself. He knows he has no rights._

_The cold water slips on his head and his face, caresses the skin with a tenderness Haizaki rarely reserves for him and runs on his closed eyelids to jump from his cilia like a diamonds rain. The drops lick his lips and enterthem **,** washing away Shougo’s taste, but he knows getting rid of his seed will be far more difficult._

_He closes his eyes, letting the white and cold universe of the bathroom vanish in the oblivion of his eyelids, and he turns hisback to the mirror. He lays his left palm opened against the back wall of the box and his forehead against the iron pipe of the showerhead, arches his back and slowly brings his trembling right fingers behind himself, to the violated entrance, to wash away the signs of the just consumed intercourse._

_And even as the pain explodes immediately **,** he keeps on and doesn’t stop, but neither do the tears on his face._


	2. Chapter I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aomine gets a call he had never expected to get. Things go downhill.

**_  
_Chapter_1__ **

 

Dark hands held the ball with fluid confidence, the grin on his face gave no signs of worry, and the dark blue eyes were focused but shining in amusement, especially when the arms reached finally for their highest point above his head. A jerking of the wrist, a perfect rhythm, a precise trajectory and the ball entered the basket easily.

“Ah!” Aomine exclaimed, triumphant, pointing both his index fingers in the air, “And with this, it’s on you!”

The policeman at the other side of their desk grunted something, irritated, while crumpling the umpteenth newspaper page to try again. His ball fell poorly next to the basket, together with its three siblings, while Aomine’s four laid calmly in the trashcan, a monument to the blue-head’s pride for his past as a player.

“Damn!” the other man muttered, in his heart resigned since the very beginning to pay the usual end-of-the-shift beer to his younger colleague, turning toward him, “You should have kept on playing. You’re a monster!”

And Aomine laughed, hiding the uneasiness he still felt in being called that way. In retrospect he recognized that he had been a real monster in his third year of middle school – and not with the meaning his colleague was thinking of, or at least not that only - but luckily Tetsuya had brought him back to his senses the following year, and so the next two had been amazing. He had returned to having fun and playing as a team and being happy. Right after though, he had left the dream of playing as a pro in a drawer and had entered the police squad.

“Being good at something doesn’t mean wishing to do it forever.” he answered, shrugging, “I wanted to be a cop, and I am. Basketball is fun, but I couldn’t make it my life.” Another ball, another point. With a single hand, from behind his back. “And I still play, for your information.”

“Really?” the other asked absentmindedly, while accurately ripping the raw material for his next bullet.

“My old teammates from middle school and some from high school and I meet once a month to play a tournament between us. It’s just to kill time, but it’s funny, and they’re all strong.” The blue haired boy pointed at his chest proudly, “Well, I am still the best, obviously.”

His partner burst out laughing at his self-confidence, but before he could answer him properly, one of the oldest detectives stopped by them. Rigid and austere in his uniform, with his hair white and rare and pulled backward, he looked really serious, and the two straightened up immediately. Daiki, being still practically a greenhorn, got particularly surprised when the man asked for him. 

“Aomine Daiki?” the detective repeated, always dark, and the blue-head had to nod a second time, a bit confused. A moment later, he found himself closing the door of the police chief’s office, remaining alone with the big boss in person and the expressionless investigator. 

He had no idea as to why he was there – he didn’t remember doing anything, at least recently – thus he stood still, his arms crossed behind his back, under the questioning gazes of the other two, who were exchanging looks to him and between themselves. And Daiki, who in between his many virtues sadly didn’t have patience, in the end fell.

“Is there a reason for this convocation?” he asked, striving to keep a neutral and not irritated or defensive tone.

The police chief was a man of fifty years, large shoulders and short black hair matching with the little eyes carved above the big nose. His squandered face and thin lips made him look scowling, but it took more than a name and a scary appearance to scare Daiki. Come one, he had grown up under _Nijimura_ and _Akashi_!

The man seemed to read the challenge in his eyes because he let out a half-smile, just for a second, before sighing.

“There’s a case.” he started vaguely, “But not a reporting.”

Aomine frowned.

“Sir?” he asked, confused. If there was no reporting, what could it be? Not a homicide, certainly; nobody minimally sane would have given such an important matter to a boy who had gotten out of the Academy barely a year ago.

“The situation has been brought to our attention not through canonical ways.” Mr Serious intervened, “There’s no direct reporting, but the ones bringing this up to us are quite… _important persons._ ”

“Persons who clearly asked for you.” the chief concluded, by then eyeing him openly from head to toe.

Aomine was even more confused.

“Sir, I still don’t understand.” he admitted, but with a voice that sounded almost accusing. He couldn’t help it; he had never been one for beating around the bush.

The inspector in front of him stiffened, and his eyes flashed, but the chief smiled again.

“Does the name _Midorima_ ring a bell to you, Aomine-kun?"

And in that very moment, Daiki’s brain started working. Something bad had happened and to one of them, one of the Generation of Miracles, or else Shintarou would have never used his family name to pull him in. Or maybe something bad had happened to the very bespectacled guy, but Aomine had his doubts that the green-head’s father would have looked for him, in that case. Be as it may, a cold shiver ran down the blue-head’s back, ripping out of him a rapid and anxious question. 

“What the fuck happened?!”

Not really respectful.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Shintarou pressed a hand to his forehead, exhausted, and ended up clenching it in a fist on some of his locks, pulling them ‘till they hurt. His left bandaged hand laid forgotten between his opened legs as the guy stood motionless, sitting on a chair in the corridor of the hospital he was studying at. His working hours had long since finished, but he hadn’t been able to left the building, so he had called Takao, actually his roommate – _“And nothing more?! Come on, Midorimacchi, nobody believes it!”_ –, and then his father. 

That had been the first time he had ever asked a favour from his parent, and it had cost him the promise of bringing Kazunari home for dinner once the situation was solved. Despite his strenuous fights to avoid that request in all the five years he had known the black-haired boy, in that moment it had looked like such a good request that he had never even thought before accepting it. He suspected, however, that Midorima Goto would have allowed him what he asked for even with nothing in return, once he had known the reason for his actions. Shintarou was grateful from the bottom of his heart.

He freed his hair from his fingers’ grip and straightened up to peek on the clock behind him, then he sighed. It was twenty-three past five in the afternoon, just a minute more than the last time he had checked. But, damn, was it even possible for Aomine to be that slow?! Or maybe his father’s power hadn’t been enough?! Maybe Daiki still knew nothing, he thought, pulling his mobile out of his pocket. Maybe he should have called him directly, with no filters, giving up on making him intervene officially or maybe… 

The sudden opening of the corridor door made Midorima’s green eyes raise, meeting the blue ones of the tall guy in uniform that, after barely a second to notice him, had already started walking toward him.

“Where is he?!” 

Not a greeting, not a compliment; neither one of them had time or breath to waste. 

“Still in ICU,” the green-head spat, guiding his friend along the corridors of the hospital, the both of them so dark looking that the nurses instinctively let them pass, scared. “He’d been lucky, and there had been no need for any surgery, but they had to put an orthopedic corset on him because he had three fractured ribs. There’s a little head concussion, but it isn’t serious.” Midorima turned right, heading to the elevators, “The problem is that he won’t wake up, even if the effect of the anaesthetics should have ended at worst an hour ago.”

“Make it simple, Midorima!” the blue head growled as the other pushed the bottom to call the cabin, “What does it mean?!”

Shintarou fixed the glasses on his nose as he got in the elevator, for once ignoring the other’s rudeness, and he pressed the button for the ICU floor, but he waited for the door to close before he answered.

“Speaking honestly, he may be entering a comatose state.” he lowly whispered, clenching his fists while fixing his emerald enraged gaze on his reflection in the iron.

Aomine growled something between his teeth, almost certainly a curse.

“I thought you said he had been lucky.” he pointed out.

“ _Physically._ ” the other retorted, his voice sharper, “Sadly enough, it’s not that rare for the subconscious of some people, after going through such things, to close up in itself as a defensive mechanism. Just because his body has been able to resist, it doesn’t mean that his mind did the same.” _He had never been strong, in that sense._ Shintarou then took a deep breath, readying himself for the worst. There were things that felt real only once they’d been said out loud, things that in the fog of his mind were so horrible that they couldn’t take a concrete shape but remained smoky uncatchable demons. Talking with the ex-teammate would have made the nightmare that had fallen on their friend turn real, and Shintarou was honestly scared he would not be able to handle it properly. “Aomine…” His voice came out low, uncertain, as his eyes stared at the numbers above the door slipping away as if in a countdown.

“What now?!” the other growled.

Midorima gulped as the elevator stopped, and his voice was so low that is was almost covered by the bell marking the opening of the doors.

“There are signs of more than one instance of rape.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

“Do the others know?”

“No, you’re the first one I called.”

“Why?!”

“You know why, nanodayo.”

Aomine gulped because, yes, he knew. Or at least he imagined it. But he didn’t like it. Or it scared him.

“He’ll kill someone.” was his only comment.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Aomine knew the world was full of bad things and of people that were more like beasts than human beings. His job reminded him of that every day, but like everybody else, he had naively thought those things and those persons were distant from him, that they would never touch him or the people he cared for.

Probably that was why he found himself stuck on the door of a stupid anonymous, far too empty and white, room in the ICU department, staring at the only bed and at the little creature – under the sheets – that he _couldn’t even recognize._

The door he entered was on the right side of the wall while the headboard of the bed laid against the left wall of the room, stretching the mattress between the entrance and the huge window on the opposite side, from which entered the light that made everything shine in an almost ironic, sarcastic, white that hurt the eyes.

Aomine, approaching the end of the bed, stared at the bundle under the blankets without finding a sense to that whole situation, but registering every single detail in one second. He was too little, to begin with. His right arm, beside his body but above the sheet to host the IV needle, was absurdly thin and skinny in a scary and unhealthy way; even his cheeks were hollow to the point that the only places that seemed to have a bit of flesh on were in truth the ones swollen from what must have been a violent beating. The mouth was in pieces, with both the lips battered with blood crusts that had the shapes of bite marks, and the right eye was black and shut in an unnatural way, while the left one made its possessor look so meek in his sleep that the contrast with the rest of the face was almost surreal, a paradox that hurt a lot. What must he have been through to get to the point where he’d prefer coma above reality? What had they done to manage to break right him who looked invincible?

With slowness and delicacy surprising from such a big rude guy like him, Daiki approached the bedside and took carefully his friend’s hand, being attentive of the needle in the back of it. The fingers he had always seen holding the basketball dangled like the feathers of a sleeping dreams catcher, and his teeth clenched almost automatically. Like a father or an older brother, shocked he himself for using such a gesture on _that_ guy, with his fingertips he moved aside from the sweated forehead some little locks of a _crimson red._

“Akashi…” he whispered, but received no answer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how much I'd pay to see your faces now. (P.S.: Sorry, ophelia123, here's your answer about what happened to Akashi v.v)
> 
> Okay, this chapter had been posted soon, but it's an exception, okay? Even if the story is completed already, I'm still doing the translation - I'm at chapter eight - so I'll take some time in between the chapters.
> 
> See you next time!
> 
> Agap
> 
> P.S.: Tumblr at agapantoblu.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hell breaks loose and Akashi wakes up.

**_  
_Chapter_2__ **

 

“No, wait!”

“ _I’m not waiting for anything!_ ” screamed the voice at the other end of the call **,** and Aomine trembled because he had _never_ heard it screaming before, except for possibly on the court. 

“Oi, just listen to me at least!” the cop tried to say, “Don’t do anything rash. It may…”

“ _I don’t care what may happen! Do you really think I can act like it’s nothing?!_ ”

“You don’t have to act like it’s nothing. You just need to c-…”

“ _DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!_ ”

Aomine shut up, shocked. For severalseconds, all he heard was the laboured breath on the other end. He sighed.

He knew it would turn out like this. He knew that telling him through the phone was foolish, but what else was he supposed to do? The actual distance between him and his interlocutor was one thousand one hundred seventy-sevenkilometres! _And a half_!

“ _I’m sorry, Aomine-kun._ ”

“Don’t say that. It’s not your fault that…”

“ _That’s not what I’m apologizing for._ ”

Daiki stopped walking restlessly back and forth before Akashi’s door, lifted his head **,** and frowned.

“What for, then?”

“ _For I’m going to the airport._ ”

And Aomine tried to stop him, he really tried, but the only answer he got was the cooing of a mute line.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi sensed the black in his mind turning into a bright and annoying red **,** and he frowned, but he was forced to relax when his right eye began pulsing painfully, stealing a loud moan from him.

“Oi, easy!”

He barely restrained from frowning again when a voice reached him, low and unsure as if coming from the depth of a cave, but somehow…familiar.

He had to call to his whole willpower – the physical one seemed to have vanished from him – but in the end he managed to lift his left eyelid and half of the right one. From the latter eye he could see everything blurred and in stains of colours as if it had been full of tears, but from the other he could recognize the known figure of a young man with bronze skin and eyes and hair of a dark shade of blue. He had to blink three or four times to make sure, but then he was forced to admit that the man was indeed Aomine. He had grown bigger, not in height as much as in shoulderwidth, and he looked a bit more muscular. He was wearing jeans that were a bit worn off and a beige turtle-necked sweater with sneakers, but what surprised him the most was the careless little beard roughing his face. The last time they met **,** they were both eighteen in their last year of high school, at the Winter Cup final match finally won by Rakuzan after two years of painful defeats – the first year against Seirin and the second one against Kaijou, always in the last game – but that allowed the team to grow and mature **,** rebuilding itself completely. The blue-head, though, didn’t look anything like the disrespectful and thoughtless guy that he used to be, instead bold and happy just for rediscovering his passion and adversaries who gave him a good challenge. Even less so now **,** when he stood bent over him **,** staring so worriedly that he looked like Momoi in one of her best panic moments.

“…Aomine…” the red-head murmured with an unbelievably hoarse voice as his lips bent in a vague smile out of his will, careless of the crystalized skin under the crusts of his mouth.

The other let out a sound that seemed a mix between a grunt and a sigh, but still filled with relief.

“Almost time!” he muttered, but then he showed him a big smile, even far wider then his **.** “Who am I talking with? The vaguely good Akashi or the definitely dangerous one?”

Akashi smiled a bit more, recognizing the joke that had been on him since Tetsuya brought him back from his other personality **,** and managing somehow to turn his head toward the other when he saw him sitting again on the stool beside his bed.

“Does it make any difference?” he asked lowly, trying to be ironic, “I don’t feel very dangerous, right now…”

Aomine burst out laughing **,** and Akashi, looking around, thanked the gods that there were no other patients in the room. Otherwise that loud noise would have disturbed everyone.

“Honestly, it’s probable that right now you’re as dangerous as a newborn kitten.” the cop assured, shaking his head without losing his smile.

Seijuro lifted a bit his right arm and laid it on his belly, as a warning to the feeling of hunger twisting his entrails.

“I’ve always liked cats.” he commented, not even knowing why, but before he could add anything **,** his stomach made a disappointed sound for being ignored.

Akashi felt the blood leaving his face, leaving it even paler than how it already was, and his throat dried, but Daiki surprised him by laughing again.

“So you _are_ human, after all!” the man teased him, getting on his feet to reach for the bed headboard and push the little button to call a nurse.

“Daiki!” the red-haired one weakly scolded, but when he tried to sit up **,** an overwhelming pain cut him in half at his ribcage level.

He fell on the mattress again with a chokedsound of pure agony, his breath laboured. He searched for air, but the pain renewed again and again and again and always to every single attempt of his to the point that he thought he would have died of suffocation.

“Akashi!” Daiki’s loud and rude voice called his attention **,** and just then Seijuro noticed the hands pressing on his shoulders to hold him still on the mattress **.** “Calm down! Take littler breaths!”

Seijuro didn’t understand, but he strived to obey. The air slowly calmed down his lungs and his beating heart **,** and in the end even pain, like a beast,returned to its lair, even if still waiting for another chance to attack. Akashi brought a hand to his chest, confused. And he froze touching something solid encircling his trunk.

“What…?” he murmured, but he didn’t know what to say, what to think. Aomine must have realized it because, sighing, he sat carefully on the edge of the mattress, though never removing the hands from the other’s shoulders.

“You have some broken ribs,” he explained. “You’ll have to wear an orthopaedic corset for three more weeks at best.”

Akashi was shocked, _scared_ , but at the same time his brain realized a detail.

“More?” he repeated, uncertain.

Daiki’s grip tightened a bit **,** and his gaze darkened. 

“They brought you here a week ago,” he murmured with his eyes still on the other’s chest, unable to sustain those red irises **.** “They said you were in coma, but that it wasn’t deep; they all talked about how good your chances of awakening were **,** but the hours went and… _Dammit!_ ” Daiki’s curse was so sudden that it startled Akashi, but didn’t scare him because everything on the man’s face was pain, with no rage. “Midorima and I didn’t know what to do!” he growled, his voice accusing and yet worried at the same time **.** “In these seven past days we barely went home to shower. After the first three, Takao called Kagami and Teppei to force us to move, and even so, it’s already been two days that I haven’t moved from here since that green-head had an exam **,** and his boyfriend forced him to stay home and study. At the office they’re not giving meup as dead only because the chief told them not to look for me; Kise calls practically every hour to check on you **,** and his sister wants to kill him ‘cause he always interrupts his photo-shoots; Murasakibara makes Himuro call three times a day because he always has his hands in some cake; Satsuki comes here with Aida before and after going to university. And in this whole fucking mess it’s a _week_ that you sleep and don’t give a single damn sign of recovery! Fuck, do you realize what kind of mess you put up?” 

Akashi hesitated. He blinked the eyelid over his widened eye – the only one he could open – and, unsure whether to say something or keep silent, he half-opened his lips without letting out a single sound. Daiki’s hands were big and warm on his shoulders, exactly like a blanket in winter, but he could still feel the cold running in his veins, coming from inside, and he knew that a blanket could offer little against that kind of ice. He lowered his eyes, like Aomine did, and he fixed them on his own rising and falling chest, well covered with the sheet.

“I’m sorry…” he murmured **,** and he meant it. He was seriously sorry for all the troubles he had given his friends. If he could still call them such, to be honest. “I didn’t…”

“Ah, spare me.” Akashi raised his surprised gaze to meet Aomine’s, but the man was snorting and getting up to reach the door. Suddenly, he turned toward him and held the handle. “Three, two, one…”

Seijuro didn’t make it in time to realize what was happening before the other opened the door **,** and a tall young green-haired trainee with glasses and bandaged left fingers literally broke into the room.

“What happened, nanodayo?!” Midorima exclaimed, without even turning toward Daiki but looking directly at the bed, just to freeze on the spot while meeting the black-eyed gaze of his patient. 

“Midorima-san, only for you **,** the great Akashi Seijuro in all his glory **,** ” Daiki mocked **,** grinning **.** “If you want an autograph, get in the line like everybody else. Oh, and he’s hungry.” 

Akashi didn’t manage not to laugh when Midorima elbowed the cop in the stomach, but his ribs punished him with flashes of pain, forcing him to cough ‘til trembling without even managing to turn to a side. It was as if an anvil had been thrown on his chest to keep him still as someone skinned his throat with sandpaper.

“Stay still!” Like Aomine before him, Midorima got near and pressed his hands on the other’s shoulders to limit his movements **,** and after some minutes **,** the cough calmed down.

“Darn it if you’re a walking trouble when you’re ill, Akashi!” the cop said, his joking intent ruined by the worried wrinkles on his forehead. “You should really chill a bit.”

Akashi would have answered, but Midorima preceded him by burning Aomine with a rude “It’s your fault, nanodayo” before drawing a little torch from his pocket. He pointed it directly in his patient’s left eye, leaving the cop muttering something that the doctor-to-be simply ignored.

“I got from the department head to use you as my training guinea pig. Look up, nanodayo **,** ” he simply explained, without even a kind word, continuing to examine his pupils reactions, but Akashi knew that Shintarou was like that and would have never changed. “You’re under his responsibility, but mine, too,” the other kept on, “so kindly try not to die **,** or my degree may literally turn to ashes. Can you open the other, nanodayo?”

Seijuro clenched his teeth and strived to lift the right eyelid **,** but this one – swollen and pained – allowed him only half the gesture.

“You sure are as pleasant as a finger up the ass, Midorima. Oh, wrong image, it’s not that you don’t like it, to be honest.” the police man said from behind, crossing his arms on his chest and ripping a little laughter out of the red-head.

“And you’re as polite as always, nanodayo.” the doctor replied while briefly touching the sensitive skin to reveal the pupil a little more and point the light on it. “There is no damage to the retina **,** and the reactions are all normal,” he finally declared **.** “I’d say you should thank all your ancestors from here to the dawn of times, for this.”

Akashi nodded, meek, allowing Midorima’s hands to lift his chin to examine the big bruise on his throat. The shape of the hand was so clear that Aomine, with himself, thought about trying to find the attacker’s fingerprints.

 

_“He’s not…an attacker.”_

 

Aomine instinctively clenched his fists, keeping them hidden in his crossed arms, to prevent Akashi from noticing his tension. The guy didn’t seem to remember waking up a couple of hours before, his wandering between sleep and wake like a drunkard and his answering to some rushed questions before falling again in unconsciousness. Obviously, the first thing the cop had asked him – right after ‘How do you feel?!’ and ‘Can you understand me?!’ – had been “Who attacked you?!”, but what Akashi had answered him before falling again into his limbo had been a few confused words that had shocked Daiki, even to the point that he had to get out of the room and go kicking and punching the coffee vending machine.

 

_“He’s not…an attacker… He…loves me…”_

 

Aomine didn’t need to know the man, not even the name, to know that he was a bastard son of a bitch that in some fucked up way he still didn’t know had managed to brain-wash his ex-captain. 

Midorima’s superior, when they had told him what happened, advised them to wait for him to recover a bit before putting him under the pressure of other questions, possibly with a psychologist. 

Daiki, obviously, didn’t like it. He felt as if he was lying to Akashi **,** and that thought opened two different roads to him. In middle and high school such a thing would have been impossible; the emperor would have immediately noticed, while now it seemed he hadn’t. On one hand, if he ever discovered the lie, Aomine would feel like a real shit; on the other hand, if he never did, the man would worry like a sinner in hell. Also, Daiki had to admit, he didn’t like that the doctor thought Akashi was crazy. Scratch that, Akashi was effectively and undeniably crazy under certain points of view, but he was a little dangerous _and crazy_ tyrant, not a poor traumatized boy that could have been broken any time. He was an Emperor, not a _victim_. 

“Fine, nanodayo **,** ” Midorima declared, taking him away from his thoughts. The trainee was getting up and putting his torch away **.** “I need to tell the department head so that he can check you too. When you finish eating, we’ll see what exams we should run and how to go on with the rehabilitation; however you’ll stay here for at least three weeks more **,** so your ribs will have time to heal properly, nanodayo.”

With that sentence, Akashi’s expression turned scared again.

“Three weeks?!” he murmured, his voice still too hoarse – due to the long time withoutusing it – to allow him to exclaim those words, but they still came out filled with terror.

Midorima and Aomine exchanged a glance that Seijuro couldn’t decipher, but then they looked athim with…warmth.He couldn’t explain it differently, but their eyes were promising calmness and kindness and protection. And they managed to melt a bit of the coldness in his veins.

“Let’s make a deal, Akashi.” Aomine said, approaching the bed and the guy’s face again. With the same camaraderie he could have had in middle school – if only he had even the guts to touch his demoniac captain, obviously – he slowly put a hand on his head and ruffled his red hair, or at least the locks that the bandage around his forehead wasn’t covering. “For now you rest and don’t worry about anything. Sleep, eat, scare the nurses, tyrannize Mr Horoscope’s chief, play shogi with the old men in the other rooms, do whatever you want to, okay? Midorima and I will take care of everything else. If we have troubles, we’ll send Mr I-Am-Famous Kise and that lazy-ass Murasakibara to solve them.” Daiki allowed himself a satisfied grin **.** “You’re not the only one who’s scary, you know?”

Akashi smiled a bit before Midorima intervened.

“Do you want us to call someone, nanodayo?” he asked, “Your father or somebody else?”

Aomine felt the tension stiffening his shoulders, but forced himself to keep on carefully caressing the red-head of a guy who looked so much like a kid that it was scary.

A kid who looked too sad when he averted his gaze from his friend’s faces.

“No, I…” He hesitated **,** feeling a little sting of pain that made his heartbeat stumble.

He couldn’t call Shougo. The man was surely furious if he had really disappeared for a week **,** and if he made a scene in front of Daiki and Shintarou, those two would surely misunderstand. They’d never gotten along even in middle school, and Akashi didn’t want to add oil to the fire. Also, it would have been easier to clarify with Haizaki alone; having an audience would only enrage him more **,** making him believe that Akashi was trying to avoid the discussion. And as for his father…

 

 _His bedroom door slams against the wall, but Seijuro expects it. He has waited for this moment since the maid who saw him taking one of his mother’s photos from the family altar ran to call the office of a certain person._  

_He turns **,** keeping his gym bag, filled with the most simple and anonymous clothes he has, his basketball shoes, his mother’s picture and his emergency credit card. He created this one two years ago, after the defeat against Tetsuya and Seirin, after the first time the world in the figure of one Haizaki opened his eyes to how little, low and weak he truly is. He put in a little money at a time, at first that much from the contest his father didn’t know he attended and then what he managed to save selling some of his belongings, in the end even hiding his bills for eating at school and simply skipping lunch. If Akashi-san doesn’t know about the bank account, he won’t be able to block it. He may be able to block him, Seijuro knows this much, but he can’t keep on living in that house, keep being that person, after all that happened. He doesn’t have the strength anymore to pretend to be happy, pure and clean when his already naturally-black soul has gotten stained in mud and dust. He just wants to leave, getting away from everything that reminds him ofwhat kind of sinner he is._

_“What does this all mean, Seijuro?!” his father screams. He has never heard him doing it before. The night he lost the Winter Cup, he turned into a loser and came back home only the following morning, Akashi senior didn’t do anything similar. He didn’t do anything at all, honestly: standing on the first floor landing, he stared at him climbing those steps with his head bowed down, humiliated, and he just let his son pass so that he could go in his room, a stern expression on his face to prove his disappointment. For ten days, ‘til when Seijuro had started training again, not a single word left his father’s lips._

_Seijuro brings his left hand to grab onto the bag shoulder-belt on his right shoulder, as if to protect himself from the rage of the man towering over him. His room is filled with darkness, he hoped he could pretend to be sleeping, and the only light is the one in the opening of the door before which stands Akashi-san, looking like just a black threatening shape._

_“I’m going.” he simply answers, his voice empty and monotone but his eyes unable to lift from the floor._

_“And may I graciously know_ where _, at this time of the nig-…?”_

_When his father shuts up, Seijuro withdraws a bit more._

_“I can’t take this anymore **,** ” his lips murmur, unable to hold back that truth there had to be a dam for, since far too much time._

_The boy waits silently for an answer, another scream or even a hit, conscious that he fully deserves it, but Akashi-san does nothing of the kind, and when Seijuro dares to lift his eyes, his father is exiting the room. Not a word, not a gesture, but Akashi feels like he’s just been slapped in the face._

_The night following his graduation, Seijuro leaves the Akashi Household without even managing to turn back,and nobody tries to stop him._

 

“…I don’t talk with my father anymore.” the boy admitted, with difficulties under his friend’s gazes.

Midorima **,** like Aomine **,** widened his eyes, but differently from the other **,** he guessed the situation after a few seconds, since he’d known **-** at least vaguely **-** Akashi-san since middle school.

“Did he kick you out?” he asks, but lowly, almost scared of being heard **.** “Or did you…?”

“I was the one who decided to leave,” Akashi interrupted him, uncertain as if he was doing it to reassure the other or to escape from that topic as soon as possible.

“Why?!” Aomine exclaimed, shocked **.** “When?!”

“Right after graduation. Two years ago,” the red-head answered, but then he closed his eyes, exhausted **.** “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Aomine tried to say something more, but Midorima’s hand on his forearm let him know it was better to stop there.

“As for now, just think about resting, Akashi **,** ” the man ordered to his patient **.** “For the rest, we’ll find a solution when the moment comes, nanodayo.”

Seijuro stared at him in surprise for long moments, butthen he sighed and nodded with a sad smile.

“Arigatou…” he whispered **,** and both Aomine and Midorima smiled at him, but their eyes kept on scrutinizing him with worry.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Some things, in Akashi, hadn’t changed despite everything. He refused the nurse’s help to get up from the bed, and he ate on his own, determined not to be treated as an invalid, and he didn’t ask for help even once. Midorima could read the shame in his eyes every time his body betrayed him by limiting his autonomy. When he helped him with the catheter or when the boy had to go through the medical rectal check-ups and the tests for any venereal disease, he never spoke. He silently endured all those things that his pride and his experiences made him feel like awful humiliations, and his face always kept a serious and collected expression. That, though, even Aomine could say, didn’t mean he was fine, but only that he wasn’t ready to open up with someone.

The talk about the aggressor was left lying in a corner of the room, waiting for the red-haired guy to be ready to face it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My second name is Satan, but at least now you know how happened that the Akashi heir ended up in such a miserable situation.
> 
> Sorry Not Sorry will be my new tag for this story v.v
> 
> See you!
> 
> Agap
> 
> P.S.: agapantoblu.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 3

 

**__Chapter_3__ **

 

Seijuro smiled when Ryouta started complaining about not being able to win against _Akashicchi._

It was kind of unbelievably a sunny Thursday, after five days of endless rain, and from the hospital window could be seen the branches of a blooming cherry tree, calling for spring to come. Light passing through the leaves and entering the room seemed painted in shades of apple green and pale pink and brought a bit of colour into the otherwise completely white room. The only colours, indeed, were the one of Akashi’s hair and eyes and those worn by the model who was keeping him company, the blond and gold of his hair and irises and the warm shades – brown and orange – mixed with grey and white on his clothes.

Akashi began taking the pawns off the shogi table.

A week from his awakening, he’d found around him a cheerful and complex routine. Daiki told him he had taken his days off **,** so he usually spent the nights in the hospital,and then he went home to rest as soon as Shintarou came for the mornings. At lunch time, Murasakibara often managed to come, and he did it always with something ‘illegal’ that would have turnedall the hair on his doctor’s head white had the man known what his patient was eating. Still, Akita wasn’t really close to Tokyo, and so his afternoons were spent with Takao, who allowed his boyfriend to go home and study, and Ryouta in his free times in between his work appointments and sometimes Satsuki and that weird angel of Riko Aida. Sheseemed to care about him **-** who knows why **-** and so sometimes passed by to visit him even on her own and always brought him basketball and shogi magazines and talked to him about sports, even if he’d long given up on his playing career. He knew all those people were there only because they felt responsible, but it was pleasant all the same **,** so he pretended he didn’t know they would have rather been doing anything other than staying with him.

“You’ve grown a lot better.” he then said to Ryouta, praising him and laughing a bit when the other put his palms on the mattress and showed him such an happy expression that it created the illusion he was wagging his tail like a dog. In the end, Seijuro found himself caressing his head with a satisfied smile. “I’m proud of you.”

The normal Kise Ryouta would have jumped on his feet shouting loud enough to make all the windows explode. He would have ran through the whole hospital to make sure that everybody, literally _everybody_ , knew that his captain had given him such a praise **,** and then he would have come back to the room just to jump on him crying in happiness. He would have been noisy and annoying, pushing as usual, but _this_ Kise Ryouta instead lowered his shoulders and painted his smile in melancholy andworry.

Akashi blinked, surprised.

“What happened?” he asked.

Kise tilted his head to the side, letting the hand his friend hadlaid on it fallon his lap and in his fingers.

“Once, you would have never told me something like that, not that openly at least,” he murmured **.** “You would have said I’d been good, but never admitted you were proud.”

“That’s not true…” the other tried to say, but Ryouta laughed a bit more.

“You were that kind only with Murasakibaracchi and…uh…well, Kurokocchi.”

Akashi jerked instinctively at that name **,** and he read in the blond guy’s eyes that he had already regretted pronouncing it. But it wasn’t like it bothered him or else.

It was simply painful, of a sharp and thin pain that drilled the brain, chokedthe lungs, squeezed the eyes to take away from him every single tear he could still cry. It was pain and a guilt trip, a nightly melancholy curling in the air around him like the melodic lamenting of a violin. Not because of Kuroko, obviously.

Akashi blinked once **,** and his eyes slipped to the sheets hosting his hand tightly held in Kise’s long and tapered ones, but what he saw was a completely different scenery. It was…

 

_…the white of the locker room ceiling._  

_First year of high school, first day of December, three hours past the final match of Winter Cup, Akashi was still there. Alone._

_The rest of Rakuzan, down from a defeat it never saw coming, had already left **,** but Seijuro wouldn’t go back to Kyoto. He should have gone to the family mansion there in Tokyo and met with his father, but he still hadn’t moved a single muscle and was simply standing there, sitting on a cold iron bench, with his back against a squandered column of wall, and his eyes wandered to the snowy ceiling unable to do anything else. His eyes were both red._  

_He had come back to himself a bit more than three hours ago, after a year and a half of confinement in the darkness of his own mind, but he felt no wish to indulge in perceptions, sounds, sights, and all those things he had just taken back. The only thing he felt like doing was getting up and throwing up all the disgust he felt for himself._

_Aomine, Kise, Murasakibara, Midorima,_ Kuroko _… How much pain had his other personality caused them? The last two in particular; Akashi would have never forgivenhimself for the cruelty against Shintarou during the semi-finals. No need to even talk about Kuroko; how could he have looked at him back in the eyes after creating Mayuzumi? After trying to steal his talent to give it to someone else, after trying to substitute him?!_

_Seijuro laughed bitterly with himself at the thought. He should have known, or at least understood immediately, that there was absolutely no way to substitute Tetsuya, that nobody in the world would have ever been able to compare._

_His arrogance blinded him._

_Akashi turned his head suddenly toward the door when a deep bang followed by a short tinkling broke the quietness of the locker room._

What was that?

_An eyebrow arched, Seijuro got up. He had his nerves tensed and his senses focused, ready just in case. That wing of the building should have been empty for a while already considering that it held the locker rooms. Who else could have still been there apart from him?_

_He approached the door in tension, still wearing his Rakuzan uniform and the sweat of the match, so when he exited in the corridor **,** the cold air gave him goosebumps. Maybe there was a window, or an exit, open somewhere? He sharpened his ears and walked down the corridor as silent as a cat. He approached the corner and laid a hand on the wall to bend over and check._

_A tall and tan guy with long black dreadlocks kicked the vending machine a second time, repeating the sound from before, and this time he managed to make a can fall **,** and its tingling echoed down the cold corridor._

_Akashi frowned._

_“Haizaki **,** ” he called, stepping aroundthe corner and making himself visible._

_Haizaki didn’t turn when he heardthe cold and imperious voice of his ex-captain, but he took his can and opened it, just to pour its content **s** on the floor._

_Seijuro frowned at that gesture, but he kept on walking toward the other until he was two steps from him._

_“What are you doing here?” he asked defensively. The other’s team had been eliminated in the quarters of finals by Ryouta’s team, thus there was no reason for him to be in the locker rooms area._

_The last drops of the energy drink fell slowly on the ground **,** and Haizaki shook the can a couple of time before bringing if before his chest and finally turning._

_“Meanie!” he exclaimed **,** mockingly while slipping **-** much to Akashi’s surprise **-** a thumb in the can hole. The metal creaked and snapped disturbingly when the guy started tearing it apart **,** opening it like a skinner with his corpse, methodically and carefully **.** “I didn’t see you coming out with your teammates, so I thought about checking on what happened to you.”_

_Akashi skeptically raised an eyebrow. In the darkness of the corridor, the only lights came from a street-lamp out the window on the left of the little room and from the LED lights in the vending machine. Haizaki looked darker, while his skin seemed to almost glow a bit, pale, in a teal shade._

_“Very kind of you **,** ” he answered, vaguely sarcastic but cautious **,** too. He knew there was something more **.** Haizaki wasn’t really that kind of person **,** and he had never hidden his hatred for Seijuro, so it was definitely out of character for him to be there really just out of worry. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. Yours had been a useless endeavour.”_

_Akashi didn’t want to talk with Shougo. The situation with him was even more strained than the one with Tetsuya even if this time he couldn’t really blame it all on his other personality. However, he was still sure he had madethe right decision when he kicked him out of the Generation of Miracles. Maybe the way was wrong, but not the choice itself._

_“I was just collecting my things. Now I’m going **,** ” he concluded, turning his back on the other and his morbid work, but a voice chased after him._

_“Are you sure?” Akashi turned, he was already in the corridor, barely three steps from the locker room, but Haizaki sustained his gaze with a serious expression. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he kept on **.** “You sure you don’t feel any…remorse?”_

_Fists clenched instinctively **,** and teeth bit the tongue, but Seijuro didn't back off from the staring contest._

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Haizaki **,** ” he replied, striving to keep his voice steady. It wasn’t possible **;** Haizaki was not that perceptive._

_“Liar **,** ” the tan one retorted immediately, getting two steps nearer to stand in front of him, yet when he was finally there **,** he stared at him with strangely dark eyes **.** “You like to pretend you don’t care about anything and anyone, let the world think you’re just a crazy tyrant, but I know that’s not true.” Before Akashi could react, stabbed by those words, Haizaki grabbed his jaw with ahand, the battered can in his other **,** and he forced him to lift his chin to check his eyes. “If you’re back to who you were before,” and the brunette smiled in meeting scarlet irises, “then I’m sure you feel like shit for how you treated your ‘friends.’” The smiled turned into a smirk. “_If _you can still call them that.”_

_Seijuro grabbed his wrist with both his hands and escaped his grip, but when he was barely half a step away **,** he felt something cold pressing against his spleen through the thin fabric of his uniform. He lowered his eyes and widened them as he discovered Haizaki had bent the can into a sort of reinforced blade of more layers, similar to a pocket knife, with its cutting edges covered only on the handle by the remaining aluminum._

_“Don’t run, Akashi,” the taller one hissed, dangerous, while staring at him with furious eyes **.** “You don’t have such aright after all you’ve done.”_

_Seijuro, maybe for the first time in his life, found himself not knowing what to do. His instinct was telling him to fight and defend himself, but his mind reminded him that the ‘can’ could still do a good amount of damage and that his uniform would not provide much protection._

_“Do you know, Akashi?” Haizaki kept on, fixing his hand again on the shorter’s throat **.** “Do you know how many you stepped on? Do you remember them?” Seijuro found himself forced to step back under the other’s lead **,** and the guy slowly pushed him to the door of the locker room. “Aside from your good comrades from the Generation of Miracles, and believe me when I say they all felt pretty bad, what about your little shadow?” Akashi stumbled as he entered Rakuzan’s room backwardly, but the grip of the other on his throat kept him painfully on his feet. Haizaki pushed him until he slammed his back against the closer column, but he never quit talking. “Neh, Captain, how does it feel to bring your boyfriend to misery? To ruin all his friendships, make his passion so painful to the point of hatred, and then leave without even sparing a glance? If I’m not wrong, they said you’d already done it, hadn’t you? You took his first time, didn’t you? He didn’t look like one to go with just anyone.”_

_“Let me go.” The voice of reason was silent in Seijuro’s head **,** and pain was screaming in his chest. Disgust filled his throat, but not for Haizaki. For himself. For that Akashi the other was talking about._

_“No **,** ” Shougo hissed, slamming him against the column again, uncaring of his weak attempts to get free from his grip **.** “You tore him apart. You tore apart everybody, even your oh-so-loved senpai.” He smiled, crazy. “Oh yeah, you should have seen it! You know, one day I entered his class and found out someone had carved ‘Loser’ and ‘Farewell, Captain’ on his desk.”_

_Akashi started wriggling for real._

_“It wasn’t my choice!” he managed to say, even if in a chocked voice **.** “Nijimura-senpai asked to…”_

_“Nijimura did the only thing he could to avoid the humiliation of being removed from his captain position!” Shougo interrupted him, laughing maniacally **.** “That idiot has always been so fucking proud… He only made you believe he had faith in him, but I’m sure he hated you instead, but that’s comprehensible. I mean, who wouldn’t hate the kouhai who stole from him everything he’d worked his ass off for years?”_

_“That’s not it…” Seijuro tried, but his eyes were widened in pain and shock._

_“It isn’t?!” the taller provoked **.** “And what about your new team? They’re all older, but you came and started bossing them all around **,** and tonight during the final **,** not only did you humiliate them by playing on your own, but you even brought them to defeat. And that one? The player who should be the bad copy of Tetsuya? Damn, you were honestly heartless. You used him shamefully when his Misdirection faded out.”_

_Akashi didn’t answer. He said nothing but gritted his teeth and lowered his gaze, maybe for the first time in his life before someone who wasn’t his father. He didn’t bow in front of Haizaki, but in front of his own fault and the regret that came with it. He knew, he knew perfectly how many mistakes he’d made, but…_

_“What do you expect me to do?!” he growled, lifting his furious yet desperate eyes to the brunette who was still threatening him and holding his throat **.** “I can’t go back in time!”_

_“Then pay for what you did!” Haizaki laughed, detaching him from the column and leaving his trachea only to turn him and slam him again against the hard wall, his free arm pressing on his shoulders to keep him still._

_“What are you doing?!” Akashi exclaimed, feeling the threatening blade leaving his skin. Was he really readying a blow? Did he really want to stab him?! “Haizaki! Stop!”_

_“Quit whining, Akashi!” the other instead laughed **,** and Seijuro’s shoulders sent him a flash of pain when a knee was smacked between his shoulder-blades._

_“Haizaki, I said stop this!” he exclaimed again when, with horror, he felt his wrists being pulled backward and then the rough texture of a cloth belt clashing against his skin, the tingling of the buckle dangling for his attempts to get free **.** “Stop it now, that’s an order!"_

_“Orders?! You to me?!” Haizaki’s voice was ironic and evil and broke something within Seijuro. He was scared. “You’re no longer my captain. Not for a good while, remember?! You humiliated me and kicked me off the team for that Ryouta bitch. The least you can do now is pay me back somehow."_  

_Akashi had never felt this way. So…absolutely terrified and lost, unable to think, shocked. For the first time, he saw himself objectively as a fifteen years old kid, smaller than the other, with a thin body certainly able to stand a basketball match but a virgin of fights, frail if compared to Shougo. They were alone in the room, the staff certainly was at the higher floors and had no intention of coming down to the lockers anytime soon, both their teams had gone home **,** and none of their teammates would have ever imagined something like this could happen. To him, among everybody, even. Seijuro realized that, whatever Haizaki wanted to do, he wouldn’t have been able to stop him **,** and nobody would have come, even just by mistake, to help him. He was _ helpless.

_“What the hell are you saying?!” he retorted all the same, struggling to free himself, uncaring of the wounds he was getting on his wrists. He had nothing to fight with if not his aura and the fear the other had always had of him since middle school. It was little, but better than nothing. “Haizaki, let me go now!”_

_In exchange, Haizaki grabbed his nape and slammed his forehead hardagainst the column. For a moment, everything went white in his sight and then all black and in the end **,** a mixture of blurred stains of colours. He managed to refocus just in time to turn his head to theside and avoid another collision._

_The brunette kept his head pressed against the wall by holding his nape with a hand, then with the other he grabbed the hem of both his pants and boxers and lowered them both with a sharp movement._

_Akashi widened his eyes. Haizaki was a bastard, but to that extent…! He couldn’t possibly…!_

_“No! Stop, Haiz-!” His exclamation died in a scream of pain and fear when Haizaki entered him in a single brute movement._

 

Akashi screamed. Not at his full lungs, it was just a broken yell that crushed against his clenched teeth, but it was enough to make Kise jerk since he had never seen his captain scared, let alone so terrified.

Seijuro pressed his hands on his ears, but the slaps of flesh against flesh and the moist sounds of kisses he had vainly tried to escape from, the moans and the sobs. It was all in his head. The hot and tasteless flavour of Haizaki’s saliva and the sharp one of blood invaded his mouth and throat, entered his lungs to fill them up and drown him, made him bend on himself until his forehead rested against Kise’s chest. He felt his friend’s hand on his shoulders and his voice came muffled to his ear, calling him desperately, but all of him turned into Shougo **,** and Seijuro couldn’t stop trembling.

_That’s not true!_ , his mind screamed, running from the nightmare. _It’s not true, it’s not true!_

He felt torn apart, pulled in two different direction to the extreme, and he was already on the verge of collapsing. What he had remembered and the feelings of then weren’t real **.** He was sure of it **,** and at the same time he was sure they were real. He could remember the pain and the fear with absolute precision, he…

He moaned. His fingers on his head grabbed his hair until he was ripping out whole scarlet locks **,** and his wrists started pressing on his eyes as if he wanted to sink them so deep in their sockets as to forbid them from seeing like another time.

Haizaki cared for him! He…He cared, yes! And he loved him and had raped him **,** and he protected him, beaten him, had welcomed him into his house, had caged him, had saved him, had almost killed him, was living with him, was abusing him, _he was the only one he had left!_ And…and…!

 

_“Shhh…”_

 

…and…

 

_“… It’s alright… Shhh…”_

 

Akashi was panting, his ribs hurt, he had tears in his eyes for the pain, he could see only black, heard a voice in his head that…

Slowly, a bit trembling, he pulled his hands down from his face.

 

_“It’s all right… Shhh… It’s all right. Can you see that?” Haizaki’s hand slips between his strands of hair carefully, moves them from his forehead to free his eyes and then cups his wet cheek, lovingly sustaining it._

_They’re knelt on the floor. It just finished, but Seijuro’s legs gave in a long before, to the point that it had been the other’s hands that had kept him up ‘till the end. He doesn’t understand; his mind is slow and filled with wadding, so he can’t make sense ofwhat just happened. His hands are still tied, but now he’s showing his back to the column **,** and Haizaki keeps him in his arms like a kid, passing one around his shoulders to hold him close to his own chest and keeping on caressing him carefully with the other. And he can’t understand why he has this feeling that this is wrong, that it shouldn’t be like this._

_He’s empty, Akashi, and he doesn’t even know it, but Shougo can read it in the greenish and unhealthy colour of his skin, in the strands of hair glued to the forehead by sweat, in the half opened lips, in the vacuous and unfocused gaze of those red eyes **,** by now completely empty of any spark. If he didn’t know better than anybody else, he would think he was blind or even dead **,** but reality is not that _ gentle _. Akashi is not blind nor dead; Akashi is_ broken _. Broken beyond repair. Akashi is exactly as Haizaki wants him._

_“Hey?” he calls then, lifting his face with a delicate movement of the fingers under his chin._

_When he meets Shougo’s face, Akashi feels himself drowning even more in some dark black thick water, but the other’s eyes keep him to his senses, forbidding him from getting away from that confused reality._

_“Come on, it’s all right now.” Haizaki’s eyes as he talks…they look crazy. “Don’t you feel better now? Don’t you feel happier after repenting for what you’ve done? Everything is fine. You can start back again, okay?”_

_Akashi blinks a couple of times, slowly returning to the surface. What…what does it mean?_

_“R-Repent?” he manages to ask, between a split lip and a flayed throat._

_Haizaki smiles at him._

_“Sure **,** ” he reassures, kind **.** “Consider what just happened as a payback for how you treated me back in middle school. We’re even now. You don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”_

_Akashi finally focuses on the face before his. He feels again part of his own body; the rip between this one and his mind is slowly closing up._

_A payback…_

_“Even…” he murmurs, feeling that word dancing on his tongue like a healing fairy, fresh and kind._

_Can he really stop feeling guilty? Can he see what happened like a gesture of honour and not of dishonour? Can he start back from the beginningtrying not to repeat the same mistakes?_

_Haizaki smiles again and takes the hand from his face to bring it to his tied hands and loosen the belt. Doing it, he pulls Akashi a bit closer to his chest, as if hugging him. Just, a bit different. Seijuro couldn’t say why._

_“Obviously,” Shougo continues, “this goes for me only, not for the others.”_

_Akashi jerks, his eyes big in fear as his mind screams that he should have known it, that this was a given, that he certainly couldn’t hope to solve everything so easily in a single night. He’s scared because he’s still the same criminal as before **,** and he doesn’t know what to do, but Haizaki brings the hand back to his cheek as soon as he’s freed his wrists._

_“Don’t worry **,** ” he says, making him lift his face again by touching his chin. “You’ve still a long way to go, but at least you’ve started, haven’t you? A step at time. Soon you’ll have everything atoned.”_

_And Akashi hears it, the voice in his mind yelling that it’s not true, that Haizaki is lying, that he shouldn’t forget –even less accept – what has just been done to him, but he ignores it. His lips and throat and back and everythinghurts, he feels dirty and weak, but now he can see a little path, a goal, before himself. Now he knows what to do, knows that he has to remedy his mistakes, and he knows that he’s just started doing it **,** thanks to Shougo._

_He nods then, and the other holds him to the chest **,** laughing._

_“I think I, too, will call you Sei-chan from now on **,** ” he decides._

_Akashi chokes the jerk in his chest that’s rebelling against that umpteenth imposed intimacy **,** and then he finally drowns in that oblivion that has been trying to bring him away for hours._

 

“Akashicchi?! Akashicchi?!”

“Oi, Akashi, don’t be a dick!”

“Akashi?! Can you hear me?!”

Seijuro opened his eyes suddenly when he recognized, in between the sound of his panting, the voices of his friends. He lifted his head a bit, confused, and the shining gold of Kise’s locks, the bright green of Midorima’s **,** and the glowing blue of Aomine’s were almost blinding after the blackness of his closed eyes and the darkness of his memory.

“Welcome back to us, eh!” Aomine exclaimed, to his left, with clear irritation as he straightened up and crossed the arms before his chest.

“Akashicchi!” Kise started screaming, to his right, as he jumped on the mattress to hug and hold him with the same strength of a sumo wrestler, with his beautiful model face smeared with tears and deformed into a face of childish desperation.

Midorima simply sighed, and then he took care of detaching the friend from his patient with far too little gentleness. Ignoring Kise’s whining for being thrown down the bed, he sat on the edge of the mattress, at Akashi’s right, and stared attentively at him as if studying him under a microscope.

“Are you okay, nanodayo?” he asks after long seconds of attentive analysis.

 

_“It’s all right… It’s all right, can you see it?… It’s all right, now…”_

 

Akashi smiled, in a way a bit sad and a bit melancholic, remembering that night and Haizaki’s words. He remembered the calmness that he had felt for a moment while hearing the other saying those things, but that had turned into anxiety the following morning in front of his father and then the coach and then the team and the ex-Miracles and at the Inter-High and at the Winter cup and then… Only that night he had felt calm, for once. Not happy nor peaceful but… hopeful, sure that he had a chance to redeem. Only calm, only then.

Akashi smiled, and nodded _because he was honestly sure everything was all right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to go thank Eve for her amazing job v.v
> 
> P.S. Tumblr: agapantoblu.tumblr.com


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akashi has a bad past and someone new gets involved.

 

**_  
_Chapter_4__ **

 

Kise gulped in one go the coffee from the vending machine beside the elevator he just exited. The hot liquid scorched his tongue, mouth and throat, but he pretended it was nothing. He had a desperate need of caffeine, or he would have collapsed in the middle of the corridor. He masked a sigh with a great smile to answer a nurse’s greeting, thinking with bitter irony that they could practically sign the hospital as his living address, especially the trauma department. He threw the empty can in the garbage basket, took a deep breath, and then slapped his own cheeks harshly with both his hands to hide his paleness, and he checked his watch: ten minutes more and he could have celebrated thirty-six consecutive hours awake.

_Three more and then you can go take a rest_ **,** he told himself, trying a sort of self-encouragement as he adjusted the teal turtleneck on his grey trousers.

With a visit to Akashi, the photoshoots, the recording of the fiction he would be the protagonist in, and the care of his house now that he lived on his own, it was really hard to find a balance. Especially if at the end of his work, he found a message from Daiki asking him – vaguely bossily – to go to the hospital in his place – well, in Midorima’s place, since the other had an exam – because his chief wanted to see him immediately and to know why there was no news in the investigation despite the fact that three weeks had already passed since the victim’s awakening. Ryouta, with all of his sleepiness, wouldn’t have traded for the cop’s situation.

He sighed again and started heading to the room 312.

To be clear, he didn’t mind keeping Akashi company. The guy was a great friend **,** and honestly he would have thrown himself out of a window if only the other asked, but seeing him _like that_ was truly, truly horrifying. The main reason that Aomine wouldn’t be able to tell anything to his chief, was that Seijuro didn’t tell anything to them. He ignored and avoided their questions, shook his head, didn’t answer… Ryouta felt like crumbling into pieces every time Daiki tried to force something out of their ex-captain and the other, simply, _smiled_. As if it was normal, as if there was absolutely nothing to be worried about.

He touched the handle, but hesitated a moment more.

There was just a little more than a week left ‘till Akashi’s complete healing and then, even if the black eye would have remained for a bit more maybe, Midorima and his sensei would have to discharge him. Where would he go then? He had left his home, and Daiki had discovered there was no place in the whole of Tokyo rented or bought or whatever with his name. And what about his aggressor? Seijuro was so determined in protecting him, so he knew him. What if he came back? What if he hurt Akashi again, and that time nobody would find him?!

_He could have died_ **,** Kise thought while clenching his teeth **,** and his hand was trembling a bit **.** _He could still die!_

He shook his head suddenly.

He couldn’t indulge in that thinking in that moment. Aomine, Midorima, Momoi and even Murasakibara with Himuro’s help were trying to discover what had happened using each their own methods and tools; Seijuro’s friends from Rakuzan, Reo and Hanamiya and Nebuya and even Mayuzumi, were searching Kyoto to see if by chance the situation had something to do with the time Akashi spent there; Seirin’s guys were trying to look for something while asking here and there nearby the place where the guy had been found in case someone had seen anything, but to no avail. Kise’s task, and he knew it, was to stick the closest to the patient - to be cheerful and annoying as always, to create around him an atmosphere of warm complicity and friendship in which he could feel again at ease and safe.

_“His body will heal with no difficulties. Akashi is strong; right know, what concerns me is his mind,”_ Shintarou had told him, and he had nodded silently because their old captain was strong in everything, but had always had a frail mind, made unstable by the – according to him, abominable – way he’d been grown up with. Besides that, there was no way to tell what effects had had on him the various r-…

Kise stomped a foot down before his mind could elaborate on the word. It made him angry and disgusted to think that their Seijuro could have been through such a thing; imagining the bastard who did that grew into him a desperate blood-thirst. If he ever found whoever was the culprit, he couldn’t say how he would react.

But that wasn’t the moment to think about it. It was the moment to be the cheerful, thoughtless, annoying Ryouta.

“Akashicchi!” he exclaimed opening the door, a huge and bright smile on his face like an exaggerated display of energy because Akashi needed to think only about himself and about…

Sleeping. 

Kise blinked a couple of times, confused and frozen on the doorstep, before managing to enter the room, closing slowly the door behind himself. He approached the bed slowly, and for long moments he stared eyes wide open at the peaceful sleeping face of his friend.

Akashi looked calm; thus he took advantage of the moment to study him attentively.

He had his lips relaxed and his head slightly bent to a side, so that the red locks were falling wildly on his face; the arm with the IV was slightly bent and showed – free from the short-sleeved hospital gown – a lot of bruises already fading, yellowish, while his hand rested on his stomach. The mark of the strangulation attempt on his neck was nowhere to be seen, like those on his temple and on the cheeks and like the bite marks on his lips; probably even the signs on his thighs had already completely vanished. Sure, he wasn’t Midorima, but Kise didn’t need to be a doctor to guess from the heavy and a bit laboured breathing that his ribs still needed a bit of time, but he looked definitely better. He had a bit more colour, and his body had put on some weight, finally not looking anymore like a skeleton with only the skin on. Still, the eye was pretty swollen, and he knew Seijuro couldn’t lift the eyelids for more than half. The doctor had said it was normal and not to worry though, so Kise strived to see only the good side of his friend’s recovery, not thinking about what would have happened once they wouldn’t have the excuse of the hospital anymore to keep him safe.

He turned to leave the jacket he had on his arm on the chair, but he suddenly turned, letting it fall, when a bleat reached for his ears.

Akashi still had his eyes closed, but both his hands were closed in fists on the sheets. His shoulders were stiff and a pained expression was painting his visage, clenching his eyes and gritting his teeth as his lips curled, making him bend his head downward as if to protect his face. Before Ryouta could even only call him, he turned to the other side and then back again and then again, as if he was signing ‘no’ or someone were slapping him repeatedly. His breath turned heavy, his mouth opened **,** and he wailed again.

“Akashicchi!” Kise called, putting his hands on his shoulders to prevent him from moving too much, but the other kept on writhing under his fingers with his eyes always closed.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

_Seijuro cleans the table._

_He does it slowly and silently, moves in the kitchen like a weightless ghost whose feet don’t even touch the ground. The dishes in the cupboard down to his right, the glasses on the shelf high to his left, chopsticks and flatware in the second drawer, instruments like screwdrivers and scissors in the third. He’s methodical. He needs it._

_He opens the water and fills the sink, adds the soap, watches the dirty porcelains sinking in the growing foam. He thinks he wants to be them. He slips his hands in the water that’s still letting out a subtly thread of white smoke, and his skin burns,_ a lot _, but he ignores it. The sponge is rough as he slowly rubs, and the squeal that it makes is the only noise in the whole flat. If he stops, he can’t even hear his own breath._

_He washes Shougo’s cup and checks it attentively, makes sure it is the cleanest possible, and then he gets on his tiptoes and stretches to the cupboard above his head, broadening his arms to the second shelf within it. He even absent-mindedly takes note that not even a crumble of irritation for not growing up an inch can moves him from the strange fog of apathy in his mind._

_The door that opens with a slam, instead, does it **,** and Akashi jerks, widens his eyes, trembles **,** and a whine chokes in his throat when his seared fingers let the cup slip out of them._

_It’s all slowed down. A thin sob escapes from him, he stiffens, brings the palms to his ears and closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see nor hear, but he can’t prevent his arm from feeling the object hitting his skin lightly before crushing on the floor. He doesn’t hear it, but an illusion of the tingling sound of ceramic turning into pieces fills his mind and makes him curl on the floor with a side pressed against the kitchenette and the head bent forward to hide his face._

_“… What the fuck was that?!”_

_Akashi wails again, curls even more and falls from his heels to his knees. Thus the shards slip into his flesh and hurt, but what’s going to happen – he fears – will hurt more._

_Haizaki’s frame in the doorstep of the room is black, for the light comes from the door at his back, and his figure is tall and imposing and threatening over Seijuro’s minute body, all curled up on itself in a vain attempt of protection._

_He bites his lips. He knows he has no excuses and lifts his arms to cover his red-haired head, but they’re just two frail branches on which both snow and plums coexist._

_He has so many bruises already that each new blow touches at least one of the old._

_“What…?!” Haizaki exclaims upon seeing the shards on the floor. In a second Seijuro’s arms are useless because Shougo’s hand grabs his hair and hurts him, makes him bend his face upward, and Akashi wails but opens his eyes to look at the other because he knows his lover wants it this way, and now really isn’t the time to make him angrier. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” the albino keeps on screaming. “How is it even possible that you can’t do any fucking shit right?!”_

_Seijuro clenches his teeth, breaks inside even more, but Haizaki ignores him because it’s just about fragments turning into littler fragments. It’s not like he’s breaking something that was whole, he, Akashi thinks; the cup is the only thing noticeable in that moment, and Haizaki keeps on holding his hair, but straightens, brings a leg backward and then kicks him in a side. His feet slams right under the last couple of ribs, and the rest of the limb hits the whole thoracic cage because his arms had lifted and his hands are close to the one strangling his locks, without even the courage to touch it though, let alone try to run from it._

_It. Hurts._

_Seijuro bleats. It’s like all his organs have been put into a sack and violently shaken, and the sack is he himself. He grits his teeth on the wave of pain that runs through him, and when his knees start pulsing less painfully, he realizes the shards are still in his flesh and that there’s almost too much blood on the floor. He’ll have to hurry up and clean with bleach before Haizaki notices; if stains were to remain, it would mean trouble._

_Shougo hits. Again, another kick and another one, in his side and then at the back and in his stomach , and he shakes his head in every direction to put his body in the best position to beat him. Shougo hits. And it doesn’t look like he’ll ever stop._

_When he finishes, he’s panting. He releases his grip on the other’s hair, and Akashi collapses on the ground with no strength left, ends up curled between shards and blood and listens motionless to Shougo’s heavy steps and the curses he chews between his teeth before slamming the bathroom door._

_Only then **,** Seijuro closes his eyes and cries because it seems like it’s the only thing he can do right._

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi didn’t jump up, didn’t jerk, nor did he widen his eyes suddenly. He lifted his eyelids slowly, and in that time it occurred to him to accept the sight of what was surrounding him. He took in some little details like the hot liquid on his cheeks, the stinging of his eyes, the strong grip of someone on his shoulders, and the pain. Not that he wasn’t used to it by then, but in that moment, it seemed worse than usual and concentrated in his eye.

Trying to distract himself, he looked for the owner of the hands that were loosening a bit the grip on his body, and it was Ryouta’s topaz eyes that welcomed him back in the real world. They were wet, too, like his.

“H-Hey!” Kise exclaimed, forcing a huge bright smile, perfect for the cover of a magazine, but clearly fake. “A bad dream?”

Akashi lifted an arm carefully, paying attention to the IV, and cleaned away all the traces of tears from his cheeks before nodding.

Both the guys pretended to believe it and started the new day with the joyless ritual of the bath, but that day Seijuro tightened with a trembling hand his grip on Kise as this one helped him **,** and he jerked to every single sound or movement of the other.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

“What do we do? He’s not getting any better **,** and in a week I have to discharge him, nanodayo!”

“Make something up and keep him here! If we let him out, he’ll go back to that shit-head, whoever he is!”

“…I want to know who they are. I want to kill them for what they did to Akashicchi.”

“Kise…”

“No! Don’t ‘Kise’ me with that voice, as if you weren’t thinking the same! He’s waken up crying, Midorimacchi! _Crying!_ Akashicchi doesn’t cry. He…he doesn’t!”

“Oi, lower your voice, idiot! Do you want him to hear you?!”

Seijuro sighed and closed his eyes. After some attempts he managed to erase from his head the voices of his three ex-teammates quarreling out of the door of his room, but that strange mix in his chest of anxiety, fear, shame **,** and **-** who knew why **-** gratefulness didn’t fade at all.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Midorima had never thought it could be this difficult. He had seen patients suffering hell – he was just a trainee but nobody ever tried to sugarcoat anything – and he had even seen some dying, but no one of them had been able to make him feel as bad as Akashi. Not really because the other was in pain – he had seen worse – or because they were close, but because he forced him to wish the opposite of what he was professionally seeking. The more Seijuro healed, the more Shintarou hoped he didn’t.

Kise was right. None of them had yet managed to take a single word out of their friend’s mouth, nothing but the pathetic lie of being attacked by strangers in a road and not remembering anything else, but his whispers when half-asleep, the apologies he murmured in tears as his body moved as if to protect itself, the pleads to stop or quit to the void. Then, awake, the way he shivered in every touch, the eyes that lowered instead of holding the whole world with pride like they used to do, the lips tightened in a slim line every time he needed something – food, water, a bath, anything – as if he was afraid to ask… All those things were far more than enough to let them know the situation was far different from what he had admitted and that, once away from their supervision, he would have probably gone back to whoever had hurt him in that time.

Shintarou, like even Aomine and Kise, had never felt that useless in his whole life.

He let Daiki enter Akashi’s room to cover his turn and peeked on Ryouta’s frame reaching for the elevator with his head held down and fists clenched, and then he started walking to the opposite direction. He had ten minutes of break; he would make them be enough.

He was not even in the students’ room, and he already had the phone to his ear.

“ _Shin-chan!_ ”

Midorima involuntarily let out the breath he had held in ‘till then. Takao may not even realize it, but his voice alone was enough to calm him down in an unbelievable way.

“Kazu, tell me you found something.” he ordered, rough, ignoring that same thought just formulated.

He knew he was being impolite at best, cruel in all honesty – because calling his boyfriend to ask him if he had information on another man was clearly horrendous, really – but Takao was special, as always, and the voice he used to answer him was honestly worried. Midorima was objective enough to know that he had never done anything good enough to deserve such a lover.

“ _Did something happen, Shin-chan?_ ”

“He woke up crying. If morphine is not keeping nightmares away anymore, it means his brain is stressing over their subject. Kise says he screamed ‘Stop’ a couple of times…and then he started apologizing.” Shintarou took a deep breath. “He pretended nothing happened. When I asked him how he had slept, he told me he has never been better.”

Takao stood silent for a moment more, waiting to make sure that his partner had stopped with his little and very polite venting, and then he gulped on the other side of the phone.

“ _I’m doing my best, but from the library I can’t access those kinds of files,_ ” he murmured, sad. “ _One of the senpai of the last year in Law department said he’ll try to help me, but he still has yet to tell me something. If I can see him today, maybe I could discover something useful, but from there to find a real contact… Shin-chan, I’m not sure that in a week…_ ”

“Don’t say it, Kazu,” Shintarou ordered, sighing. “I’ll come up with some strange illness, or we’ll have him arrested by Aomine. You give it your best; earning some time more for Akashi is up to us.”

Not that he had really expected Takao to do it. They had barely called him the day before, and sure, the task they had given him was not the easiest in the world. Midorima was already going to hang up when the other stopped him.

“ _Listen, I don’t know if this can be used in any way, but…_ ” The sound of papers and tingling of pens and pencils falling were heard from the other side of the phone, but for once Shintarou held back from scolding his boyfriend for his… chaotic order. “ _I found a name in the list of the guys from fourth year, as I looked to find someone with information on what we need. I don’t know if it can help Akashi, but…well, I thought you’d wanted to know._ ”

Midorima frowned.

“What are we talking about, Kazu?”

When _that_ name slipped out of Takao’s lips, the phone fell from Midorima’s hand.

It took a moment for the young doctor to recover. Then he was fast in picking the phone up and screaming at Kazunari to contact that person no matter what, and then he closed the call, swearing to himself that he would have earn his forgiveness, and he ran out in the corridor, heading non-stop to his friend’s room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have fun dealing with me, guys ^-^


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aomine drags in someone more and reveals Kuroko's whereabouts.

 

**__Chapter_5__ **

****

 

“Aomine.”

“Uh? What’s happening?”

“I need to talk to you for a moment, nanodayo. If you’ll excuse us, Akashi.”

“I won’t die just because you’ve taken your eyes off of me for fifteen seconds, Shintarou.”

“Tsk…”

“Oi, what the heck are you doing?!”

“I hope you have your car, Aomine. You need to go meet someone. Now. I’ll stay with Akashi, nanodayo.”

“… EH?”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Aomine barely stopped on the sidewalk before the hospital, and he only did that to remember where he had left his car in the damn big parking, but at least that way he noticed the blonde figure sitting in his own car.

 _Didn’t he leave something like ten minutes ago?_ he thought, getting near.

He almost imagined Kise had fallen asleep like that, tired as he was, and he bent to tick on his windshield when he noticed that he wasn’t sleeping at all. His head pressed on the steering wheel and his hands clutching it forcefully, Ryouta was trembling slightly, but Daiki took little time to understand the situation.

Not thinking twice, he opened the passenger door.

Kise jerked and let out half a scared shriek, but when he recognized the frame that was locking itself in the car with him, he only tried to brush his arm across his eyes as fast as possible.

“You know I won’t fall for it, idiot.” But Aomine’s voice was low and his insult not enough to make the other refuse the handkerchief that came with it.

“Sorry,” he said, drying hastily the marks of that little crying. “I’m going home now, I promise.”

Daiki sighed.

Kise couldn’t sleep. It was going on for days and not because of work. They both knew it far too well even if they were avoiding the matter. He couldn’t sleep because he kept on waking up from nightmares and nightmares about what could have happened to Akashi, and then he felt the need to call him and _beg_ him to check if Seijuro was still in his bed. Kise was not childish, not closer to his captain than the others, but he was a model and that, at least for him, hadn’t only meant fan-girls and a lot of photos but hate letters too, prompts to ‘throw himself down a bridge’ and most of all some stalkers, one of which had  _by far_ crossed the line.

Aomine knew it because he had stood over to the other’s place for two consecutive months before the police managed to catch the bastard, and back then, they were only eighteen and in their last year of high school. Kise had never told it to any of their friends because he wanted that part of his life at least to be as serene as it had always been – indeed, even Daiki had discovered it only by chance, answering his friend’s phone without really thinking much about it – but at the end of the year Aomine had joined the Police Academy. In those two months, they had gotten together, but that couldn’t change how traumatic it had been for Ryouta, even only receiving advances and death threats from that madmanall the time. Akashi’s situation was particularly difficult to handle, even if he was trying to ignore each memory of his own experience.

Silent, Daiki slipped an arm around his partner’s shoulders and pulled him to his chest, letting him tremble there and realize that he had a handhold that would always be steady for him.

It was clear that Kise was striving, but in the end a louder sob escaped his lips, and his crying resumed.

“He doesn’t even look like himself…!” he sobbed. “Why did they do this to him?!”

 _I don’t know if there’s a reason, but if it existed, it sure isn’t one that can give a meaning to all of this._ But he couldn't tell Ryouta something like that. Aomine knew it, so he simply sighed and left a kiss on his lover’s head.

Because Daiki could even act like a dick, but _he_ loved his boyfriend for real.

Trying not to shake the other too much, he moved a hand to his pocket, and after a long rummaging through who knew what, he managed to pull out a set of keys and offered it to Kise, who instead looked at it confusedly.

“Go to my home,” he ordered, but with no spite, kissing his forehead. “You know you sleep better in my bed.”

The blond model blushed, carrying on drying his eyes. It was true. Surrounded by Aomine’s scent it was easier for him to calm down, but it was difficult to admit it even if his dependency from the other had always been more than clear.

“Daikicchi…”

“I need to do something, but then I’ll come back. I may be able to stay a couple of hours, even if I still have to come back here tonight.” This time, he kissed the other on the lips. “Everything will settle back, okay? We’ll take that bastard, and Akashi will be fine again, I swear.”

Kise didn’t look very convinced. He had big purple bags under his eyes and a reddened nose and cheeks, but he bit his lower lip and nodded.

The policeman smiled ruefully before opening the car door again.

“Good boy,” he joked, ruffling his hair as he got out of the car, but instead of closing the door, he bent once more. “I love you, Ryouta.”

Kise giggled, vaguely heartened.

“Me too…” he whispered, but even after Aomine had left, he needed a whole quarter of hour before feeling calm enough to drive to his lover’s apartment.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_Tokyo University Cafeteria._ Aomine, honestly, would have never expected to be able to say he had been there.

It was nothing more than a sort of canteen, similar to the one he used to eat at in middle school but bigger, with more light and for older kids. It was even almost empty right now, but it was indeed half past four in the afternoon. What idiot besides Kagami or Murasakibara would eat a full meal at that hour? He shook his head to chase the thoughts away. Solitude and a little bit of privacy were the reasons that had pushed him – read: pushed Midorima – to choose the place for the upcoming meeting.

Silent, he pushed the glass door, got in, and checked the room ‘till when he finally found _him._  

He was sitting at a solitary table, in the corner beside the window on the university gardens, and was tapping his foot, clearly annoyed. Approaching, Aomine noted he had grown a bit taller, even if now he could easily called him long-limbed in comparison. The shoulders were strong, but not large, and the eyes were as sharp as ever. The gaze the man gave him when he noticed his arrival was a clear warning similar to ‘ _It better as hell be important or else I swear I’ll hurt you.’_

The policeman sat before him. He wasn’t in uniform - he had thought it was stupid to call that much attention without a good reason - but he had the mustard-colored folder of the case under his arm. He hoped it could be confused for the material of a fellow student, though.

A waitress came before they could even greet each other. Aomine ordered a coffee, and the other did the same. As soon as the woman had vanished, blue and grey eyes checked each other’s for a second. In the end, the second sighed and laid back against his chair.

“I have an exam to prepare for and no time to lose,” he muttered, “but the brat on the phone said it was important, so… I’m listening.”

Aomine’s instinct was pushing him to let all the story out like a swollen river, but his mind reminded him that Akashi deserved after everything to be treated with the highest care, so instead of saying anything, he opened the folder, picked out some papers, and laid them on the table. He pushed everything toward his interlocutor slowly. The lucid folder slipped meekly on the smooth surface. The other guy turned everything in his direction and checked the first photograph in a long silence.

It was the first picture taken at the hospital, by the medics, as soon as the surgery was finished. Akashi’s chest was wrapped in bandages and the corset, but the bruises on his arms, legs, and face were well visible.

Daiki observed the guy’s expression turn immediately - frowning and eyes sharpening even more - as he turned the photo to look at the second.

Emphasis on the bruises on the wrists, clear shape of hands. The third: emphasis on the marks on the neck, attempt at strangling. Fourth: emphasis on the black eye. Fifth: emphasis on the bruises on the right calf. Sixth: emphasis on the bruises on the inner thighs. Seventh: X-ray plate of the trunk, broken ribs. Eighth: emphasis on…

The waitress came back with their orders, but before Aomine could act, the other had already turned all the pictures, so that they couldn’t be seen. The women left a couple of coffees in big plastic glasses and vanished rapidly. The guy didn’t go back to look at the photos. 

“How is he?” he asked instead, a serious tone and a dark expression.

Daiki laid against his backrest, too, and caressed absent-mindedly the edge of his glass, making it turn on itself.

“Physically, he’s healing,” he answered slowly, carefully measuring his words. He was in front of a ticking bomb, and he needed its help, not its explosion. “Psychologically, it’s far more complex.” 

The man seemed to be analysing his words carefully, reading something in them. Then he bent forward on the table to talk in a lower voice. Those grey eyes, Daiki noted, imitating him, were flashing in a less than reassuring way.

“Fuck the exam and everything else,” the guy growled, pushing his black hair away from his forehead and pointing a finger at the turned pictures. “Tell me who did this. Tell me, and I’ll beat him to death.”

Daiki imagined the scene, even without giving a real face to Akashi’s attacker, and he found himself disturbingly attracted to it. The temptation to solve everything in a more _personal_ way was strong, _very strong_ , but the badge in his pocket seemed to be heavy as a rock and prevented him from nodding. 

“I don’t know,” he still answered, lowering his gaze. The other was clearly near the point of cursing, thus Aomine interrupted him in the middle of the first word. “Akashi’s not talking.”

The black-haired guy arched a brow, skeptical, but stopped trying to swear, and his eyes told Daiki that he better explain before he lost his patience. The young policeman held tightly the glass in his hands, and his shoulders stiffened instinctively, but he started speaking all the same.

“He was found three weeks ago. A woman saw his body abandoned in a backstreet and called the ambulance,” he admitted. “Midorima is an intern in the hospital where he’s been recovering and noticed him by chance as he checked on the unidentified patients. He had no documents but still his wallet with some money within, so it wasn’t a mugging. Midorima asked information from his chief and was allowed to check on his folder.” With a little gesture of his chin, Aomine pointed at the pictures still face down. “He found scars from old beatings and that there had been even episodes of…rape…” Daiki’s teeth clenched on the word, letting it out as if spitting, but he kept on. “…that damaged his colon. Midorima asked for his father’s help to get me on the case. I tried to do some research, but as long as Akashi was in coma, we couldn’t really do anything. He woke up a week later.”

“When you say he is not talking,” the other interrupted, serious, “do you mean that he can’t anymore or that…?”

Aomine shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter when or how we asked. Akashi always says he’s been attacked by some random strangers in the street and that he doesn’t remember anything else regarding the aggression,” he explained. “Obviously, we immediately thought he was lying, so I checked on some things. He says he ran from home two years ago, and apparently since then, he almost vanished. No new address, no job, no studies, nothing. Simply disappeared.”

Daiki sighed. “At first, for as much as we dug, we couldn’t find anything that could give sense to this, but then Kise…” The guy arched a brow, but Aomine admitted he had called the other Miracles, too, and the other kept quiet to let him finish. “…Kise thought about asking at other medical offices.” The blue-haired man clenched his fists. “Since the first day he ran away, Akashi had gone in and out of hospitals. Every time in a different one and in a different part of the city, definitely far from one another. I called and went to ask information, and apparently sometimes it had happened exactly like this one. Someone found him laying somewhere and called for help, and then he was cured and discharged without much fuss.

“Some other times though, usually in the occasions when he was able to walk, someone brought him by car to the clinic. A doctor remembers clearly that it was a black car. He didn’t pay too much attention to the driver because he thought they were just going to park and come back, but then nobody came for Akashi during the whole time, and he was a bit suspicious. He said that it was only a broken arm, so in a few hours everything was done, and there was no reason to keep the patient in. It seems Akashi made a call, and the black car was suddenly at the entrance again. The doctor remembers hearing the driver telling him to hurry up, not really kindly, but he didn’t manage to see the man in his face or to read the plate. To him, Akashi was quite humble, almost submissive, with the man, and we both know it’s not like him at all.”

The other guy stored the news in silence, and then he shot a dark look at the policeman.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“I talked with another detective at the department who had often taken care of cases of rape. I told him what we knew, and he thinks Akashi may…” Aomine took a deep breath, preparing himself for the end of the world. “…he may be in a relationship with his assaulter.”

There was a moment, one in which Daiki thought the whole world was turning in the wrong direction, because the guy before him widened his eyes and for a moment he read the pure horror and worriedness that up until then had been hidden under a mask of determination and strength. In the attempt of running from those, the policeman resumed his talking staring only at his already cold coffee.

“The detective says that all the clues lead to this hypothesis. The continuous change of hospitals may be a sign that Akashi is trying to hide the place he’s living at now. The fact that the other man drives him by car away, or that he’s probably the one leaving him in the street - always in different places - when he’s unconscious may have the same goal. And we need to keep in mind that Akashi is covering for him, that he keeps on saying he’s okay, but then he starts apologizing as he sleeps or having nightmares. And the sexual assaults… Midorima says it’s probable they had been going on for a good share of time by now, so…”

“Aomine Daiki.” The policeman lifted his eyes at that dark and threatening voice, and he found himself meeting a serious face but with two eyes shining of badly hidden fury. “Are you trying to tell me Akashi is actually in a relationship with the son of a bitch who raped and beat him to a pulp?! That the man who almost whacked him to death is his fucking ‘boyfriend’ or something?! Are you serious?!”

Daiki nodded darkly.

“I’m trying to find the asshole who did this to him,” he assured, “but Akashi is not talking. I don’t know what to do, and in a week at most, Midorima will have to discharge him. And it’s sure as hell that he’ll go back to that bastard if we don’t do anything.” Aomine clenched his teeth, but then he lifted his gaze and met directly the grey ones of his interlocutor. He needed the other, and they both knew it. “We may not have another possibility. He may go to another clinic with a fake name, and we wouldn’t know. He may even get himself killed next time. He had already risked it this time and…”

He didn’t continue.

The images in his head were running crazy. Sceneries always more horrendous than the last jumped on him and all with a direct connection to Akashi’s pained screams. And the worst thing was that those composed only of two words: _I’m sorry_. As if it was entirely his fault. The only thing the policeman was sure of in that moment was that – as for all the others – he would do everything to prevent such a vision from turning real again. Thus, he lowered his shoulders and went to the extent of begging, looking straight at the guy sitting before him.

“There are only two persons in this world that can talk some sense into Akashi,” he murmured slowly, “and you’re one of them.” He gulped. “I wouldn’t ask you this much if there was any other way, but…”

“Aomine.” The guy’s voice was cold like ice, and Daiki found himself remembering how that particular tone had always been a signal of upcoming storm. When _that person_ lost his faces and started being serious, even the Generation of Miracles instinctively trembled. “I have only a question,” he said, getting on his feet and glaring at the policeman from up high, making him shiver. “Where. The. Fuck. Is. Kuroko?!”

_About that._

Aomine gulped again, and with a face, he scratched his nape nervously.

“Well, actually…” he murmured, without the courage to face the other, because undoubtedly as soon as he had known, Hell would’ve broken loose on Earth. “…somewhere in North Korea.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Of all the things he was expecting on that day when he received the call of a – probably high on drugs or caffeine and with a desperate need of sleep – kohai begging him to go to the cafeteria to meet Aomine Daiki who had important news to discuss to him, getting to know that Akashi had ended up in a fucked-up relationship with an abusive man who almost killed him sure wasn’t in the top ten. It wasn’t even in the top hundred. Probably it didn’t even exist in his list of hypotheses.

He didn’t consider himself weak; honestly he was sure he never had been. He didn’t like his impulsive and reckless character, sometimes exaggerated and unable to keep calm, but that was different. In his ‘rebellious phase’ in middle school he had began a dangerous life, often finding himself caught up in brawls and street fights. He wasn’t proud of that time, definitely not, but he could say he had seen the results of a beating enough times not to get too impressed anymore.

Akashi’s photo, though, had made him feel sick, on the verge of throwing up, and he had had to mentally thank the waitress arrival for letting him have some time to calm down, so that he could later ask all the questions buzzing in his head. Maybe it was the fact that Seijuro was the one who he had expected the least to fall victim to someone else, maybe because – for as much as he had tried to tone it down – he had always had a soft spot for that kid. Nevertheless, there still stood the fact that an hour and a half passed since the news, and he still felt blood boiling in his veins. He had always been good to pass from anger to calmness rapidly, when necessary, but in that moment he sure wasn’t able to do it. He wanted the head of whoever had made such a slaughter.

Aomine, beside him in the hospital elevator, must have realized it because since when they had left the university, he hadn’t dare to open his mouth if not to answer some late question.

As the doors opened and the policeman led him down the corridor, he thought about _the other_ problematic brat, too.

Because of everything he had expected Aomine to mean while talking about ‘somewhere in North Korea’, a fucking cell was a possibility that hadn’t even crossed his mind.

 

_“Tetsu’s mother is a computer programmer, and she’s working at an important software for a North Korean company. Since his father had moved there temporarily with her, Tetsu had joined them some months ago when the project was almost finished, but after I called, he had tried to come back home immediately. It seems that the company directors had thought it was all a farce to allow him to steal his mother’s program and sell it to a Japanese company, so they called the authorities. He was forbidden to get on the plane, and well… You know how Tetsu is. If someone he cares for is in danger, he loses his mind and… I don’t know exactly what happened, but he was arrested for resisting a public officer. They say they don’t want to let him go ‘till when his mother’s work will be launched, and he won’t pose a threat anymore. The point is that the date of release is in four months.”_

 

It was to be said that those guys _always_ did things greatly, even getting into trouble. 

“Generation of Miracles, tsk!” he grunted lowly, and Aomine, even if he heard him, didn’t answer. 

In the end, the policeman stopped before a door, and he shoved away all the other thoughts. Now he only had to focus on Akashi, on doing his part and trying - if not to get a name - at least to convince the other not to go back to his ‘partner.’ The best idea he had gotten was to invite – read: force - the brat to come live in his apartment in the campus ‘till when he was completely recovered. Midorima would have invented some strange painkillers collateral effect or some inexistent danger in the sudden post-discharging and end of the story. He only had to push Akashi to say yes and then keep an eye out on him. Carefully. 

 _Easy, uh?_

He grunted to himself, then nodded, and Aomine and the guy opened the door and peeked in with his head to see who was inside.

“Oi, Satsuki, Aida, Murasakibara,” he greeted, mostly to warn him of who was present. The other processed the names. He didn’t remember any Aida except a famous national player for the Japanese basketball team, but he had retired years before, and still he doubted it was him. “Akashi, there’s someone for you. Can I let him in?”

It wasn’t a real question because the policeman opened the door and moved aside to leave a path for him before even receiving an answer. Seijuro was already speaking when he saw who it was.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

“Who’s th-…?” The voice died in his throat when his eyes landed on a familiar figure and widened.

Tall, slim but strong, vaguely intimidating with his frown above the silver and sharp eyes. His black hair was a bit longer than when he was in middle school, but the aura emanating from him hadn’t changed at all. He may be wearing barely a grey V-neck polo on a white shirt and a pair of worn out jeans on some brown shoes, but everything in him screamed ‘Command’ as if he still wore the basketball uniform Akashi was used to thinking about him in. He always held a sort of childish adoration for the other, and that not even the Emperor could break. That same uniform - Teiko Number Four - he, too, had worn.

“ _Nijimura-senpai,_ ” he whispered, clenching his fists on the pale sheets to hold back the trembling he felt running down his spine. His mouth had dried out, and his voice had come out raw and low, but he was sure he had been heard. His former captain arrival had brought the most absolute silence in the room, managing to shut up even Momoi’s chattering and Murasakibara’s munching.

The two were looking at the black-haired guy with almost the same deference of Akashi, but with far less surprise, and yet the guy didn’t spare them a glance.

Those eyes like two drawn katana were staring only at Seijuro. They were checking on him from head to toe, lingering on the bruises and IVs piercing the snowy skin, on the thin arms – still _too thin_ despite the nourishing diet Midorima was forcing him to have – and on his hollow cheeks.

For some reason, the younger one had the feeling that whatever his predecessor was seeing didn’t suit his tastes at all. And only then he realized, he had called him, out of habit and dragged by the wave of respect that seeing him again had awakened, _senpai_. He hoped he hadn’t offended him.

Shuuzou approached the bed without looking or saying a word to the others present, even if in his mind he had stored every single detail – even concerning that still mysterious Aida, sitting beside Momoi – and simply stared at his former kohai.

“Hey, Akashi.” His voice, different from the one of the other, showed no hesitation. It was strong and pure as always, just like when he pretended to be evil and surly and everything he wanted. But in the end he put himself always on the line to defend them all from whatever threat, even minimal, even from that monster of their coach. “It’s been a while.”

And just like that Seijuro realized Nijimura knew, like all the others, and that he was there with a specific goal. Just, he was sure he didn’t have the strength to face him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an evil person. Eve is not, so go thank her.
> 
> Tumblr: agapantoblu.tumblr.com


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nijimura speaks his mind.

**__Chapter_6__ **

The light was grey. It came from the window, reflecting the shade of the sky, as the ticking of seconds was counted out loud by the ceaseless sound of a thin rain. The air was cold and had created a film of condensation on the glass that was saving the room’s warmth while the trees seemed to be trembling at every drop hitting their leaves.

They couldn’t compare to the way Akashi’s hands were trembling though.

For as much as the rest of his body was rigid and straight while – sitting in the hospital bed with sheets on his legs – he pretended to still own that same strength that he once had, the pale fingers couldn’t stay still **,** and their movements weren’t hidden at all by their spasmodic grip on the blankets. The angle of his head and the red strands of his hair were covering his eyes, but Nijimura didn’t need to look at them to know.

 _Fear_ was all Seijuro was emanating. If only he had lifted his head, he would have discovered that only _wrath_ , blind and killing, was coming out of Shuuzou’s clenched fists. Stiffened shoulders and gritted teeth tried to hold back the curses running freely in his head like dark violent promises.

Nijimura sighed. This wasn’t the time to indulge in a fit of rage – it would have probably only worsened it all, judging by Akashi’s state **–** and thus, even if unwillingly, he loosened his fingers.

Silent, he moved to the edge of the bed and sat on a corner at the end, careful not to move too abruptly and not to get too close to the other. As per Midorima’s saying, Akashi had troubles accepting strangers’ closeness; he sure wasn’t part of the category, but it had been so long since the last time they met that it was impossible to foresee any reaction.

He allowed himself a moment to observe the other, sighing mentally in relief as he noticed that the IVs as well as the bruises and bandages had definitely decreased since the moment the photographs he had seen were taken, and he waited in silence for the other to look at him.

He didn’t. Instead, Akashi’s shoulders bent a bit as his head lowered even more.

Nijimura bit his tongue to keep from swearing, but then he moved his gaze away to lay it on the door before him. He stared at it imagining the others outside. Aomine pacing back and forth like a panther in a cage, Midorima laying against the wall and hiding his anxiety by fixing the glasses on his nose, Murasakibara sitting on a chair with his snacks forgotten and an arm around Momoi’s shoulder and a sad expression on his face as she pressed hers in his chest to hide her praying lips. It was Saturday, so Kise had already gone home. He wondered what Riko Aida was doing and what kind of relation she had with Seijuro.

_Seijuro. Right. Stay focused._

Without moving, he shot a glance at the kid, but the other did not dare look at him. He sighed again.

“So…” he murmured, but he froze immediately. He had tried to keep his voice down and calm, but Akashi had jerked all the same. His rage burned even more and bested the frail filter between his mind and his tongue. Despite it being still low in volume, his tone was iron-hard and dark when he said **,** “What happened to you?”

Akashi had a spasm. A little sound got stuck in his throat, but he suppressed it **,** and Nijimura found out that his kohai still had some willpower hiding somewhere.

“Some strangers…” Seijuro murmured, not lifting his head, but the other’s peremptory voice stopped him before he could start his carefully prepared version of the facts.

“Spare me the bullshit, Akashi.” Nijimura was growling, dry and cutting, but with no movement other than closing his eyelids. He had honestly hoped that, at least to him, the other would have told the truth.

For some minutes the silence reigned. Rain kept on pouring, creating trembling and trans-lucid shadows in the rectangles of light projected on the floor and mattress, giving dynamism to a scene otherwise cruelly motionless.

Nijimura opened his eyes again and pointed them to the ceiling, letting his head fall a bit backward.

“They’re all walking on eggshells around you,” he said, serious. “They’ve always been like that. But I’m not like them, you know, so don’t expect me to be good and put on some fake smile like Momoi or Kise to pretend all the time I don’t know you’re showering us in lies.”

Akashi gulped. Nijimura took it as an assenting sign and let another brief silence commence to tidy his confused head up a bit before turning to the other to observe him again, face and low eyes and curved shoulders. That resigned pose didn't suit him, he decided.

“They’re all worried, you know?” he carried on, with a bit more of kindness.

Again, Akashi didn’t say anything nor did he move a muscle, and another silence filled the room.

Shuuzou wondered if it was because of the time they had spent apart or if it was the thing that Seijuro had been through, that talking was now this difficult. He knew the other was not like he used to be anymore, but he was even sure that a certain phantom would’ve known how to talk to him even in this situation. What a pity that he was probably in jail.

He sighed for the umpteenth time. Then he ran a hand through his black locks, and doing it, he noticed the already fading colours of the basketball wristband he was wearing. He stared at it.

It had been those six idiots present for his retirement from the club, at the end of his middle school third year and before he moved to America for a couple of years to assist his father. He always wore it, even at night, and he only pulled it off when he showered. With time he had gotten so used to it that he didn’t even pay it mind anymore. Looking carefully, he could see how it had worn out or count the dangling ripped threads. Even the once clear and bright lines of the rainbow that he was had faded with consumption. He wouldn’t trade it for all the gold in the world, anyway.

“Oi, Akashi **,** ” he murmured, continuing to stare at his own wrist. He didn’t think much about what he was saying, but only at how he would've sold his soul to bring that guy to a safe place. "I talked with Aomine and Midorima.”

It was a minuscule reaction, but Seijuro lifted a bit his head at the mentioning of those two names **.** Shuuzou would've sworn he was being spied at from behind that curtain of red locks, but he faked indifference.

“Next week, when you'll be discharged, you'll move in with me.”

Another jerking and a strangled moan **,** and Nijimura turned only to find that now Akashi's whole body was trembling. He tried to call him, but the other didn't answer. He hesitated. He stretched a hand to touch him, but he froze with an arm in mid air when the other's back curved even more, and his body jerked back to escape the touch. He stood still for long seconds before finally giving up.

“Akashi **,** ” he called again, and this time he felt ashamed. He, too, was now keeping his head low and his black hair to cover his grey eyes because he, too, out of guiltiness didn't have the courage to look up. “I won't let you go back to who beat you like this, okay?” he whispered, stubborn in his barely audible voice, similar to the murmur of the wind and empty of any note that could've make it recognizable, low and anonymous like that same hospital room they were in that very moment **.** “Not a single one of us will let it happen.”

 _You liking it or not **,**_ went unsaid, but it echoed in Akashi's ears for whole minutes, without break but lower and lower as the noise of a tense silence covered it unavoidably.

He didn’t know what to do. Out of all the persons, Nijimura was the last one he wanted to hurt, and yet everything, from the posture to the voice to the words, screamed at him just how much he had disappointed the other.

He raised his head a bit to spy on him and saw his former captain turning his head again to the door, as if trying to look through it, _as if he wanted to run away from there not to say anything more._ It was clear as day that he didn’t mean what he had said. He probably had just felt in duty to offer **,** or maybe he had talked about it with the others and had turned out to be the only possible choice for some reason. Maybe they had chosen by chance among them to see who’d be burdened with him since nobody else had come. But he wouldn’t have ruined Shuuzou’s life even more. He had already done more than enough in middle school.

“There’s no need to…” he tried to say, but again, like the first time he had tried to talk, _to lie_ , Shuuzou stopped him abruptly.

“It wasn’t a proposition, Akashi **,** ” he said **,** and his voice was suddenly sharp and cold, the tone of a captain he used when someone made him lose his patience, as he checked from the corner of his eyes. Seijuro was sure he was looking terrified at best.

Four weeks in the hospital were already an awful lot. Had he been away more time, even worse moving in with another man… Only the gods may say what Shougo would do to him! The only time he had talked with a stranger – a university student that had asked for directions to the bus station – his boyfriend had kicked him until he had spat blood, broken three of his left hand fingers by crushing them under his feet, and then dragged him by his hair to the bed. He hadn’t been able to walk properly for the next four days. And Nijimura-senpai wasn’t even a stranger; Shougo knew how much he had admired the captain and had never been able to stand him! If Seijuro were to live with him for even just a day… Another thought broke the chain of images in Akashi’s mind: he was already talking with Shuuzou! It was enough to wake a fit of rage like never before! Haizaki was to never knew about it, never!

“I…” He realized he was trembling even more than before, and he knew Shuuzou would’ve noticed, but he couldn’t help it. He could already hear the screams and curses rumbling in his head and the pain blooming in his body like the bruises on his skin. “I…!” Haizaki could even kill him. What would stop him this time?! Such a big betrayal, he would never forgive him! He could _really_ kill him out of rage or… or… “I don’t…! Not…!” …leaving him! What if his boyfriend left him?! If he threw him out, telling him to get lost at once?! Haizaki was all he had, all that was left, and he was the only one who could love him even if he was so wrong in the head and all the awful things he had done in the past and…!

His throat dried suddenly **,** and that mixture of disjointed pants and groans that the fear of Shougo’s jealousy had brought grew silent suddenly with a humiliated gurgling when a thought fossilised in his mind. _… I’m sure he hated you instead, but that’s comprehensible…_ Nijimura was probably the one he had hurt the most, after Kuroko. _… who wouldn’t hate the kouhai who stole from him everything he’d worked his ass off for years?..._ He shouldn’t even dare to look him in the eye, after what he had done. He shouldn’t even… His head lowered again, his eyes ran to the clenched fists on the sheets, but his furious beating heart didn’t slow down. _…You know, one day I entered his class and found out someone had carved ‘Loser’ and ‘Farewell, Captain’ on his desk. …_

Tears, he felt them running, he saw them building up a swollen and opaque wall on his corneas as if preparing a wave to throw down his cheekbones, but he locked his eyelids and forced himself to hold those back.

 

_Quit sniveling, Akashi. You have no fucking right to._

 

In all that, Nijimura was looking at him, trying to read his thoughts in the convulsing of his body, but Seijuro had hidden his face again, and all the other could read was his fear. The older wondered if it was at the thought of living together with him or with someone in general after what had happened to him, or if he was terrified of the idea that whoever did that to him would come back. He couldn’t answer that, but whatever the cause, he knew it would take a long time to eradicate that fear from such a tiny body.

 _Tiny…_ he thought, observing. Yeah, it was, but at the same time it wasn’t a brat’s body anymore. Akashi was twenty already. And it was since he was _eighteen at least_ that someone was abusing him ceaselessly. _He’s still a brat, at least in mind_ , he told himself. Somehow, he was really hoping that was true, so that he would have had some chances more to make the other ‘grow up’ in a better place. Sure, he didn’t think of himself as the perfect choice to take care of Seijuro, but he would do everything he could. The kid deserved that.

“Midorima,” he murmured **,** getting back at the topic and hoping that a justification would calm the other down, “told me there may still be some risks during the first days after the discharge, mostly because of your concussion, so it’s better if you stay with someone else.”

“I…” Akashi answered almost automatically, too focused on catching every inflection of his senpai’s voice to understand how much he was giving away **.** “I wouldn’t be…alone.”

“With someone _who’d bring you to the hospital if necessary_ , not who’d send you here by kicks and punches **,** ” Nijimura clarified harshly **,** and Seijuro bit his lower lip, unable to answer back.

The umpteenth silence made him feel like crying again and forced him to close his eyes again, but this time that noiselessness wasn’t broken by any sentence, instead by the creaking of the bed springs when Nijimura got on his feet.

“I know I could ask you a thousand times **,** and you wouldn’t tell me who did this to you,” the man murmured, and his defeated voice wounded Seijuro to the point that he had to grit his teeth to face the pain. “But Akashi.” He spied on Shuuzou from the corner of his eye, but the other, hands in his pockets, was motionless, turned toward the door even if he was still talking. “I have no intention of leaving you with him. None of us, despite whatever you’re thinking. So give up and resign yourself to the idea.” And that last sentence brought along the sweetness of the little kind smile Nijimura’s shoulders were hiding from Seijuro. And the younger couldn’t resist anymore.

“I’m sorry…” he murmured, his voice so low that it almost got choked by the ticking of the raindrops against the glass. It looked like Akashi couldn’t win anymore, not even against the rain. Nijimura turned to him, surprised, but the other was still keeping his eyes low and holding his sobs back. “I’m sorry…” he wouldn’t stop saying, “I’m sorry…”

And it took Shuuzou six years **,** but finally, after two minutes of “I’m sorry **,”** he understood what those red irises had tried to tell him that night in school, when he had resigned as captain of the basketball team.

He sighed, but he turned with his whole body to face Akashi in a challenging pose that he had tried to avoid to keep from scaring the other, but now he used it to force him to accept what was going to be said.

Seijuro kept on trembling and apologizing, but without looking at him, as if his mind was chasing after other thoughts.

 _You ruined his life. You ruined his life. You ruined his life_. That endless mantra was all Akashi’s head could elaborate. His irises grabbed onto his hands the same way those did with the sheets, desperately, as if trying to keep hold of control, too. He felt cold, that cold that made one tremble and brought tears to eyes, that closed throats up in a grip to suffocate the apologies trying to get out of lips, that tried obstinately to rip the heart out.

The chaos in his head, though, became suddenly silent as Nijimura approached him, even brushing his thighs against the mattress.

Akashi felt the older one’s breath on his head **,** and he wanted to run, to hide in a corner and escape the confrontation with the only person he had ever admired like a god - yet at the same time - wounded the worst. The other stretched his hand out, and he snapped, brought his arms to protect his head, bent his legs to his chest, and closed his eyes to wait for the blow he _knew_ was coming.

Shuuzou froze for a moment, shocked at the defensive pose of the other, but then with Aomine’s words in his mind, he resumed his moving.

Seijuro clenched his teeth to get ready for the hurt, but his eyes widened immediately when what he felt was only the dense warmth of Nijimura’s familiar caress on his head. He was so shocked that for some moments he just stood still, with those long fingers gently ruffling his red hair with such affection he wasn’t used to anymore.

When finally he lifted his head, Shuuzou was wearing his serious expression and had in his eyes that light from when he entered the court in the middle of a match, when he reached them with the pride of the senpai and the captain, when he was so _big_ even Midorima and Murasakibare felt as if they were looking at him from down high. When he was a _god_ and Seijuro could do anything but worship him silently.

He felt tears pressing even more harshly at the pain spreading in his chest, but he still refused to let them fall. He tried to say something, _anything_ , but his voice seemed to have vanished. Even if it was left, all in his head was a mixture of pleads and apologies that Shougo’s harsh voice overcame with his screams.

 

 _You don’t deserve it, after all you’ve done to him. You don’t deserve_ anybody _to forgive you._

 

Haizaki’s voice was so loud, _so loud_ , in his mind that it suffocatedhis own, but when Nijimura opened his mouth, his voice was firm and determined and put everything to silence to fill the air and his head like a unbreakable law. Absolute. 

“ _I_ _gave it a lot of thought,_ ” the guy started to declare, observing Seijuro even if the other kept on keeping his head down, and he talked with seriousness and determination to let the other know how firm he was, “ _but in the end, I think this is the best way to do things. For both the club and for me._ ” Akashi body jerked and Nijimura knew he had recognized the words, so he filled his chest with pride as he repeated the last ones, “ _Please, make Akashi Seijuro the captain._ ”

For the first time, on the words Shuuzou had said that fateful night to the Teiko coach, Akashi lifted his eyes to meet his senpai’s **,** and red and grey got chained together, looking for two different truths, ‘til when the older one smiled a bit, in a way that was quite condescending and…motherly.

“I would’ve never wanted anybody else in my place, Akashi,” he murmured **.** “I took my choice because I felt it was the right one **.** I could have stayed the captain, but I would’ve been ashamed of myself if I had used my age to keep a position I knew someone else deserved more.” Slowly, he retreated his hand, but only a bit, and Akashi trembled again seeing it so close, but didn’t backed away because he was too focused on staring at his former senpai’s sharp eyes. “I told you, didn’t I? That I was counting on you.” His smile grew a bit kinder as with a snap of his fingers Nijimura flicked his forehead, gently, in that way of his to show, and at the same time to hide, his affection. “You didn’t disappoint me,” he concluded, “thus you have no reason to apologize.”

Akashi gulped. It was all he could do **,** and thus it was Shuuzou, with an hand on the crown of his head, who forced him to nod.

“Here,” the older said, “that’s better.”

And Seijuro strived, pretended to chase away Haizaki’s voice from his head and not to see impressed on his retinas the images of what the man could have done to him once he was back at home, thus, with all his willpower, he showed his former captain a tired smile.

It wasn’t much, but Nijimura decided to consider it a starting point. After all, he still had some aces to play up his sleeve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret nothing v.v -and thank EvesMagick-
> 
> P.S.: agapantoblu.tumblr.com


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nijimura tries to help. Keyword, "tries".

**__Chapter_7__ **

_Don’t do it, dumbass!_

Nijimura clenched his teeth and even the grip on his mobile when the voice in his mind turned from little whispers to full screams. He was annoyed, with himself for his own impotence and with Akashi for his stubborn silence and with the world because, _fuck_ , it never spun the right way.

_Come on, you have no fucking right to do it! You could even worsen it all!_

On his feet in the hospital corridor, in front of the coffee vending machine, Nijimura turned back to look at Midorima and Takao discussing organizing the turns for the following week, so that Akashi would never be alone **.** Aomine was back in his office **,** and, even if he couldn’t see them, Shuuzou knew that Riko, Momoi **,** and Murasakibara with Himuro – _Himuro!_ How could he be there?! – were managing at least in part to soothe the stress his appearance had imposed on the red-haired guy, which was why he had decided to leave the room for a little while. For that reason and for a doubt that was definitely testing his conscience.

_Don’t be an idiot. You can’t know what will happen if you do it!_

Nijimura observed his phone’s screen where, in the low and synthetic light, appeared the info of one of his contacts. He hadn’t called that number since middle school **,** and even then he had done it only once, usually simply receiving a call and sometimes answering questions that would usually anger him. He wasn’t even sure it was still an active number…

He lifted his gaze back to Akashi’s room when a little chorus of greetings from the nurses reached his ears. Kise had come back to pick the jacket that, half-asleep, he had forgotten, but stood for a moment outside the door, took a deep breath, faked a smile **,** and entered with an happy expression.

Shuuzou was shocked by how that cry-baby had grown up, how strong and reliable he had become, but even he knew that, after all, he was feeling awful for the situation.

_Fuck!_ he mentally yelled at the voice in his head that was trying to object again, and meanwhile, he pressed the dialing button and brought the cell-phone to his ear before he could regret his choice.

It surprised him that only two rings bounced in his head before a low and deep voice, kind of raw but in an elegant way, baritone, answered him in a polite but somehow commanding way.

“ _Shuuzou-kun, I’m sure there’s a valid reason for this call._ ” It was hissing and annoyed from the other side. As he pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers to keep calm, Nijimura didn’t manage to hold back a mental cursing.

“Akashi-san,” he still answered, tensed but determined to get to the point too, “I have some important news about his son and it would be better if…”

“Shuuzou.” Akashi Masaomi’s voice was hard and cold as he interrupted the other who, instinctively, shut up and waited. The order came peremptorily: “Speak.”

Nijimura started regretting his choice.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi observed with a little amused smile the redness on Riko’s face as Himuro whispered something in her ear about Murasakibara, as the other and Momoi yelled absurdities about nutritive properties or lack thereof in chocolate biscuits during rehab. Shaking his head a bit, he took a minuscule bite of the cookie his old teammate had brought him, ignoring his contorting stomach when the sweet taste invaded his mouth. He really wasn’t hungry **,** and his body seemed determined to refuse any sugared thing, but it would have been rude to Atsushi to refuse **,** so he faked ignorance. Soon, however, his mind had something else to focus on, instead of his own little appetite.

_Nijimura Shuuzou_ above everything else. He hadn’t expected to see his ex-captain to reappear that way **,** and even less he had expected his offer.

Seijuro suddenly felt like throwing up.

He couldn’t accept. It was too much, and then he was already in enough trouble, but he would have to find a serious and believable excuse to convince everybody to leave him alone and stop guarding him. And if he didn’t managed, if his words weren’t enough…

Akashi felt a strange grip, cold yet cutting, in the middle of his chest as he focused back on the scene before his eyes, which now held even a muttering Midorima with a laughing Takao peeking from under his arm. He thought even of Aomine, who was putting in so much effort for him, and of Kise, who was pretending to be stronger than he really was. And then, unwillingly, he thought of Kuroko, too, and it was strange because he didn’t know anything of Tetsuya anymore. How he was or where or what he had done after high school. Probably even the others knew nothing about him, but in his mind the phantom was still the same guy from school with sky-coloured hair above those big inquisitive eyes. Akashi thought about everybody and discretely clenched a fist when he realized the truth.

If he were to lose them again, he would miss them a lot.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

That morning, when he approached the nurses counter and signed the visiter register, Momoi miswrote one of her name’s kanji. Better, her hands suddenly trembled **,** making her change her surname in a stain of ink, but she didn’t pay it much mind. The reason of that uncommon gesture stood out at the top of that same paper **,** and it was the date.

_Three days_ **,** the girl thought, biting her lower lip and holding the pen **,** almost breaking it.

Three days **,** and Akashi would be discharged, with all the consequences that they all had foreseen with dread the whole month. Sure, there was the offer-order from Nijimura, but, for as stubborn as the captain was, they all knew that if Akashi wanted to leave and vanish again, nobody would have any chance to stop him. He always got what he wanted, and already for two years he had vanished without leaving them any hint to follow. And if a good share of them had simply ignored his distance, _someone_ instead hadn’t had peace trying to get to him for more than a year, but with no results.

Satsuki closed her eyes and gulped. If only Tetsuya were there, he would have known what to do and what to say. He would have reasoned with Akashi as always and…

“Baka,” she told herself, simulating a nervous laughter while running a hand on her face, hiding a single betraying tear. “It’s not like crying will help at all.”

She sighed, but then took a deep breath and turned. Then she stopped.

Her pink eyes widened **,** and her mouth opened in a surprised ‘O **,’** leaving her still and lost for a second, staring at the figure that had just come out of the elevator.

_It can’t be possible **…**_ she thought **,** shocked.

And yet.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi was keeping a hand clenched on the window frame more out of habit than necessity.

By then, he walked on his own and with no need of a wheelchair for a while, but his bruised ribs had given him some troubles until some days before, and thus he had been allowed to move around on his legs only rarely. It was nice to be able once more to feel autonomous, and falling and breaking something again sure was not in his plans.

_Where the fuck have you been, uh?! Come here! I asked you something! Answer me!_

His grip clenched a bit, instinctively, and his lips stirred in a thin line that choked the little smile that preceded it. Not falling now didn’t mean he wouldn’t find himself with something broken again in the near future, but he understood. He had vanished for _a month_ ; Shougo had all the rights to be furious with him. And he had no intentions of running from the confrontation with his boyfriend. He still had that much honor to accept what was waiting for him, knowing he fully deserved it.

He sighed, trying to calm down his heart that was beating fast for who knows which strange reason, and he lifted his chin a bit to savor, eyelids closed, the light wind on his skin. He could feel his red hair moving on his head **,** finally free from the gauze that had held his forehead **,** and the goose-bumps running down his naked arms and legs before slipping under the light blue nightgown of the hospital and gently caressing his trunk **,** finally with no corset. It had been removed the previous day **,** and Akashi had never felt so relieved before.

In the end, conscious that if Midorima had found him up in full wind he would have been given an endless speech about his inability to take care of himself, Seijuro detached his hand from the window and turned to the inside of the room to go back to his bed before the arrival of his next platoon of sentries. It was Momoi’s and Aida’s turn if he wasn’t wrong—

He lifted his eyes and froze even before taking a single step. His bed was almost in the middle of the room, but behind it, exactly in front of the window, there was the door, and before it, a man.

Tall, elegant in his grey suit with even necktie, with pale skin and a severe frown, with short dark ordinated hair and black cold eyes, he had something aristocratic in the way he kept the chin a bit lifted. The kind of man who demanded immediate and perfect results, _always_.

Seijuro trembled **,** and his hand clenched back on the window frame, searching for help, but his eyes never managed to leave the other man’s.

Akashi Masaomi didn’t wait to be invited in.

Simply, in silence, he walked to his son’s bed and stopped beside it. His straight posture and the big hands slipped in his pockets with a clearly fake nonchalance didn’t manage to distract Seijuro enough not to let him notice the way _his father_ was striving not to look him directly in the eyes.

It hurt, but he forced himself to hide it. He gulped.

“Father…” he murmured slowly, as a greeting, but his voice came out raw and low, hoarse, and he ended up moving his eyes to the floor **,** too, humiliated.

His father was there. Undoubtedly he knew what had happened, and in his perfect mind Masaomi surely couldn’t accept to have a homosexual son. Surely he had come there for that, because he had known Seijuro and Haizaki were a couple, and he wanted them to break up. In the end, he had already done it in the past when he had realized his heir’s relationship with Kuroko was a bit strange to be one of friendship alone.

But he didn’t want to leave Shougo! He was the only one he had left!

He half-opened his lips to talk, to say anything, but the movement of his father’s arm froze him on the spot.

 

_“Why the fuck were you talking with that bastard?!” Slap. “Shougo, wait, this isn’t how…!” Slap. “Shut up! Whores like you should only shut their dirty mouths!” Slap, slap, slap. “Shougo!” SLAP._

A groan died in his throat. He pressed his back against the window, but the glass was frail, like him, and offered no protection. He bent his legs, crouched on the ground **,** almost sitting on his heels, and crossed his forearms before his face to cover it and clenched his teeth, but didn’t dare to run.

Masaomi stood silent. He stared at his son turning into a rolled up scared puppy, trembling in his clearly vain attempt of a defense. He looked younger than his age, thin in the too big nightgown, shaking with trembles and closed up in himself to the point that the only visible thing of him were his crimson ruffled locks.

In his trousers pocket weighed a wallet, and Masaomi pulled it out. Always in silence, he slipped one of the many credit cards out and laid it on the bedside table. Then he turned and reached the door. He closed it behind his back without a single noise.

It took many seconds for Seijuro to find the courage to lift his head enough to peek on what his father had done, and when he understood, he grabbed tightly on his own strands and fell on his knees. Soon the tears became too many to be held back by mere willpower.

He found himself thinking that Shougo was right in the end. He was nothing but a slut.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

When Momoi got in, shortly after seeing Akashi Masaomi leaving, and found Seijuro crying on the floor, she didn’t think twice. She put aside that little guiltiness she felt for the lesson her friend would have lost and pressed the dialing icon on her phone. 

Nijimura answered at the first ring.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Shuuzou had deluded himself, during the years he had had to take care of that bunch of idiots from Teiko’s basketball club and during those beside his father, to be a responsible and smart person, but he should have known the comparison with Aomine, Kise, and Murasakibara wasn’t worthy of trust. As he ran through the campus, as he stomped his foot nervously on the bus, as he pushed aside doctors and nurses to get to Akashi’s room, he called himself an idiot thousands of times.

Why had he called Masaomi?! That man was a bastard. He had always known it! How could he have been so stupid to think that _for once_ , at least in that fucked up situation, he would have worried for his son?! He hadn’t done it, not even when his wife Shiori died!

_Fuck you, you old asshole!_

He reached the door with an endless wish to kick it down, but Momoi’s thin frame, arms crossed, before it stopped him.

As soon as she saw him coming, the girl moved a bit, detaching from the door to meet him halfway and keep him two steps from the room.

“He’s asleep.” The girl had a low voice, subtle and thin like the fingers that she laid on the captain’s chest **,** and the other knew.

“He’s pretending, isn’t he?” he growled in a low voice, but he already knew the answer **.** “That idiot…”

Satsuki didn’t answer, but the way she lowered his gaze was a clear hint.

Nijimura clenched his fists.

What should he do? Go into the room and confront Seijuro at all costs? Force him to talk? Ask for his forgiveness for having thought that his father could act like a parent at least once in his poor excuse of a life? Or maybe he should leave him be and wait for him to be ready? Maybe pressing wasn’t the best choice?

“Dammit,” he growled between his teeth, his clenched fists stiffening his whole arms and shoulders. They were back to the starting point, and this time he had no cards left to play **.** “Dammit!”

Momoi lowered her gaze even more, even if not moving an inch from Akashi’s room door.

Nijimura thought, for a moment, that she looked like a carillon ballerina guarding her little soldier. Then he came back to curse the world under his breath.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi didn’t feel anything because the world around him was distant and fogged, as if separated by the invisible film of a bubble that was his only defense and at the same time his cage.

He was lying on his side in his bed and felt the mattress curving slightly under his body, as if to embrace his curled up figure. The sheet, subtle and fresh but a bit rigid against his skin, seemed made of paper and almost creaked every time he rolled it more on himself. The light from the window was dimmer and dimmer, and soon it shifted from the blue shade of day to the redness of sunset to the blackness of the night.

Seijuro closed his eyes, hiding his face in the hot pillow, so soft to the point it made him think it was trying to swallow his head whole.

He just wanted to go back to Shougo.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

“…Yes?”

“ _Let’s put the details aside. Had they already told you what is going to happen from now on?_ ”

“Yes.”

“ _Then we have nothing left to say._ ”

“I see.”

“ _Well._ ”

“Well.”

There was a moment of silence, one of those that was impossible to fill, made of so much poison it could have substituted the water of the whole ocean but at the same time weighted by the responsibility of a meeting that couldn’t be broken no matter what the cost, even if that meant gulping that same vitriol and keeping high one’s mask as it burns the stomach.

Finally, the sound of the mute line let one of the two know that the other had finished the courage to keep up the farce.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret nothing and you can all cry.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akashi is confused and meets someone.

**__Chapter_8__ **

_There’s a crack in the wall, right beside the door. Contorted and sharp, it vanishes behind the plate with the owner’s name, and there it dies, silently._

_Akashi tightens his grip on the bag shoulder-belt a bit. It’s pouring, the sound of the drops so loud it makes it difficult to even talk on the phone from behind the frail defense of a public cabin, but he’s almost sure he got the address right._

_He’s soaked. It started raining shortly after his ‘escape’ from home, and it took him almost twenty minutes to find a phone, then another hour to get to the building he is at now. In the meanwhile water froze his skin and even the medulla in his bones. He clenches his teeth, trying not to grit them, and, trembling a bit, he dares a glance right and left, hoping nobody can see him in that moment. His red hair is glued to his forehead, and the white short-sleeved shirt has turned transparent. The black gym-suit pants are no less wet and are attached to his skin, making the mere act of walking even more difficult than how his drenched sneakers are already. If someone was to see him, they would call the police for sure._

_Luckily it looks like nobody is around. The building is a complex of apartments, all one-room or two-rooms, divided between three stories. The stairs are visible from the street and connect together three balconies that pass before an empty procession of identical doors in a worn out blue. The walls were probably white once, but time painted them in a strange yellowish shade, and a lot of cracks, like the one that calls again for Akashi’s eyes, give out the feeling that the whole structure is going to fall to pieces._

_Seijuro shakes his head harshly._

_He has no right to judge, after all. This or a bench in the park. He doesn’t have many choices._

_His hand lifts to the doorbell, but his finger hesitates before pressing the button._

_He thought about asking the others. For a moment the image of each one of them had caressed his mind, but in the end he didn’t. Mayuzumi, Mibuchi, Hayama and Nebuya are all in University; Kise has his job to worry about, and Murasakibara is already struggling with taking care of himself, let alone someone else. Among those who are in Tokyo, Aomine has Momoi to take care of, and Midorima and Kuroko, despite being the ones he has always felt the closest with, are also the only ones in the Generation of Miracles that he still can’t look into the eyes for more than some seconds, three at best._

_Tetsuya noticed; Akashi knows it. The phantom even asked him if he was all right once, but he had only answered 'yes'._

_The night of the Winter Cup, when he solved things with Haizaki, turned into a wall between him and the rest of the world. He is ashamed of that moment. He keeps on thinking about it and wondering how he could fall so low, selling himself for forgiveness, but then he thinks that making up for what his other personality did is a goal that’s worth going to every length. And then he doesn’t know what to do anymore. He thought about talking with someone, Reo or maybe Shintarou, but every time shame and guilt stopped him, forcing him to confront the picture of the unstoppable warrior the world has of him and practically forbidding him from asking how he was supposed to feel in that situation. In the end, he is left with only one choice._

_He presses the button, and his eyes rise slowly, almost suffering, to the kanji of the surname:_ Haizaki. _When the door opens, however, the irises ran immediately to the owner of the house._

_Shougo smiles when he sees him._

_This Ain’t Love_

Aomine pushed away the umpteenth passer-by and slipped in between a couple that was speaking, but he didn’t stop to listen to any of the protests following him. He slowed down just long enough to show the distinctive to the security guards, to force them to let him through, and then he hurried up again.

When he finally stopped, he was panting and sweating and couldn’t find the voice to say even just a single word, but luckily, he wasn’t required to. He barely managed to register the hand grabbing his forearm before being forced to run again, only in the opposite direction.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_Akashi hesitates. He’s already inside, yet he can’t do anything but stay still on his feet three steps from the entrance door, with his bag still securely on his shoulder and his soaked socks sinking in the pool of water that fell from his body. He keeps his eyes low on the old linoleum floor and has his ears tense to any little noise caused by the householder’s movements._

_All of a sudden, Haizaki, with his hair once again white and short and his eyes sharp, stops before him and slams something against his chest._

_For Seijuro, it’s a surprise to observe the towel offered to him._

_“Go take a shower before you get a cold,” Shougo orders rudely, and while talking, he grabs the other’s shoulder-belt, almost ripping it, before pushing the guy rudely toward the little bathroom of the apartment. “Use whatever you need.”_

_Akashi hesitates again, hearing the bathroom door closing behind him, but then he turns to shoot it a look. A sneeze and the umpteenth shiver persuade him to ignore the glass in the sink, the soap on the floor, and the hairbrush on the floor, making him get closer to the shower before the mirror._

_He’s embarrassed to undress himself, even knowing nobody is looking. He feels a strange warmness on his cheeks while pulling off his shirt and the trousers and the underwear. Flashes from his first night with Shougo assaults him, giving birth to a painful pulsing in his head, and forces him to grab it with both his hands. He suffocates a groan and almost runs into the shower, hurriedly pulling the curtain behind him and opening the boiling hot water to its maximum._

_With the murmuring sound of the scorching drops against his skin and the dim light of that little cubicle, the visions fade away a bit, leaving Seijuro free to listen to his own laboured and unsure panting._

_This Ain’t Love_

“Aom-…”

“Oi, I’m doing my best, okay?!” Daiki growled, pushing violently on the horn as if it could suddenly dismember the queue they were stuck in. Why did everything have to happen to them?!

His companion peeked at the digital clock of the car. The digits lazily laid out to show forty-three past ten; thus, he moved his eyes to the cop and stared at his clenched hands on the steering wheel until they whitened with tension, the arms rigid, his shoulders bent, and an awful expression on his tanned face. Finally, he sighed.

Aomine noticed too late the movement in the passenger seat, and he barely managed to turn and pronounce a short “Oi, what are…?” before the deafening sound of an alarm siren pierced his ears. The siren of _his_ car, to be precise.

As the car before them moved to let the police pass, Daiki stared gaping at the minute figure of his friend entering back into the car from the window.

Azure eyes sustained apathetically and yet stubbornly blue ones.

“My criminal record is already dirty, Aomine-kun. I don’t particularly mind worsening the situation.”

“Dammit, _Tetsu_!” Aomine grunted, but never finished the sentence and just pressed the gas.

There were only two days left before Akashi’s discharging, and the only person that could maybe persuade him not to go back to the bastard that left him on the verge of death had just reached Japan. He wouldn’t be the one to protest.

Kuroko Tetsuya smiled a bit, meekly, to his friend before moving his gaze out the window, his hands clenched on his lap maybe a bit too tensely to be uncaring.

_Akashi-kun…_

_This Ain’t Love_

_“Akashi!”_

_Seijuro jerks, surprised, hearing the punches harshly against the bathroom door, and for a moment he doesn’t understand. Only after a while, he realizes he’s been motionless in the shower for who knows how long, and then he stops the water and exits the shower, risking stumbling on the floor. He murmurs an unsure “Coming!” as he wraps a towel – an awful beach one with a big disturbing picture of a yellow fish in a green setting – around his body, and only then he dares to open the door._

_Haizaki takes a step back and observes him for a moment. Akashi seems even littler with no clothes on, and it’s clear by the dimension of his thin arms that he has lost a lot of weight, probably too much for it to be something natural and healthy. The red hair has a Bordeaux shade due to the water, and it’s stuck to the forehead in spread and waved strands, like red lightning bolts falling through an almost white sky, because warmth seems to have left that body. His scarlet eyes are open and big like a scared kid’s, even if now more anxiety than fear lays on him. Shougo brings a thumb to his lips and licks the fingertip as he observes the way the other keeps the towel tight to his chest, trying to get cover, and how the cloth creates a little tube around his body, exposing barely the shins and feet._

_It is as clear as day that Seijuro hasn’t realized he has just run in the wolf’s den, or that at least he’s sure that_ this _wolf isn’t a bad one straight out of a fable._

_His naivety makes the albino smile even more, before he decides to move._

_“Come on,” he orders, taking the other’s hand and pulling him with moderated rudeness to the bed._

_Seijuro suffocates a half groan when he’s pushed on the mattress and closes his eyes, waiting for…_ that _, but he opens them in surprise when he feels another cloth being laid on his head. He turns a bit and sits on the edge, lifting his head just to find Haizaki on his feet before him. The feeling of hands massaging his head through the towel is really strange; only Kuroko before had dried his hair like that._

_Something seems different though, a voice in his head tries to warn him, but Akashi chases the thought away and simply lowers his head and eyelids again._

_“So…” the albino starts after a little while, always massaging the other’s head. “What will you do now?”_

_Akashi jerks, surprised. He told Shougo of his escape when he called to ask for sanctuary_ , _but he hasn’t planned further; he hadn’t the strength nor, honestly, the courage. In the end, he knows that_ further, _there’s absolutely nothing._

_“I have some money I saved…” he murmurs anyway, closing his legs a bit more and clenching his fists, and his attempt at being determined would probably work better if only he could look Haizaki in the eyes. He can’t hold anybody’s gaze anymore, he notes. Since that very night of two years ago, he hasn’t been able to. “…and I’ll find a job.”_

_“Impossible.” For a moment, Akashi thinks it’s the voice in his head, the one that has always yelled at him ‘till then that he can’t find a job when he doesn’t know how to do anything. Then he realizes it’s different and lifts his eyes, but only a bit because Shougo has bent to sit on his heels and is scratching his nape, thinking. “Nobody will dare to take you in after you ran from home. They’re all too scared of your father.” Seijuro knows it, and thus his lips stretch in a thin line. The only thing he can do is hope that Masaomi won’t change his mind in a night and start chasing after him; being ignored is his only chance to escape, or else it will be Hell and worse. “Well, it can’t be helped.” Haizaki snorts, getting back on his feet, and Seijuro’s eyes are drawn to him, forcing the littler one to lift his head as well in order to follow the other. Shougo smiles at him weirdly – in a way Akashi would call fake or cruel if he didn’t know this one is the only person who’s still willing to help him – and puts his hands on the hips. “You’ll stay here, and I’ll take care of everything.”_

_Seijuro widens his eyes, shocked by such a kindness, but then he snaps. There’s no way he could impose on Haizaki that way. He absolutely doesn’t want to do something like that._

_“No, I can’t…!” he tries to say, but the other is faster._

_He grabs his chin with a hand, placing a thumb in a cheek and the index in the other, the remaining three closed in a fist to sustain the other’s jaw, and forces him to break his sentence in the middle with a half moan due to the sudden little pain. Akashi is forced to lift his head, to meet that face now open in a clear malicious smirk._

_“I insist,” Shougo declares, but there’s something strange in the tone of his voice, as if that word was an order more than a courtesy. Then he smiles and bends over ‘till his face is just a few inches from Seijuro’s, who instead stands still. He doesn’t know if he does so out of his own will or because of the other’s grip on his face. “After all,” the albino keeps on, his voice lowered to a velvet whisper, “I’ve always liked you…” The hand gripping his face slips on a single cheek, cupping it for a second before turning and caressing it with the back of the fingers. Haizaki never stops smiling. “You can be my cute little girlfriend from now on.”_

_There’s a spasm in Akashi’s mind, and he goes still for a second, but Shougo’s fingers are gentle up and down his skin, and he decides to shut his instinct up. There’s just one thing…_

_“I’m not a girl, Haizaki,” he tries to say, a bit offended in spite of himself by the comment even if he’s sure the other said it with no evil intent._

_The older one doesn’t seem touched by the scolding, but his smile goes wider._

_Before he can say anything more, Akashi feels the hand that was on his face run to his shoulder and push it, making him fall backward on the sheets. Shougo towers over him immediately, laying a knee on the mattress beside his right thigh and grabbing both the wrists with only five fingers to then bring those above his head. His free hand travels on the hem of the towel that has covered the other up until now, and Seijuro feels his face heating up and reddening when the feeling of cloth on his skin disappears, leaving him naked before the other._

_Grey eyes slip attentive across his chest and stomach, as much as the hand that undressed them, and let the smirk under them show off even more._

_“Mmm, I still need to verify this…” the man comments, his voice low and raw, and Akashi feels the heart in his chest stumble on its beatings as a shiver runs down his whole spine._

_“Hai-…!” he tries to say, but Shougo’s mouth reaches for his, shutting him up._

_It’s a voracious and passionate kiss, like a feline devouring his prey, and when it ends, Seijuro is breathing heavily, barely able to articulate a coherent thought._

_Shougo takes advantage of it._

_Akashi bites his inner lower lip strongly as his body meekly accepts the cares it receives. Like a little branch fallen in a river, he lets himself be dragged by a much stronger current, and in the meanwhile, hides the vortex of his thoughts. It doesn’t feel…right. He knows he’s being selfish and spoiled, but he can’t help but think that there’s something…not necessarily wrong, but different. Yes, it’s different from when it was with Kuroko._

Quit it! _he orders himself, shaking his head despite the fact that Haizaki has his face in the crook of his neck, in a strange parallel of what’s happening even lower._

_He can’t think about Kuroko when he’s with Shougo. That is definitely wrong. He lost Tetsuya because of his attitude and his thirst for victory. Now he can only bow his head and accept the defeat._

_A feeling not really of pleasure makes him arch his back and let an agonizing half scream out of him, but Haizaki bites him, as if punishing him, and he goes back to shutting his mouth._

_To be honest, he knows he’s far too lucky to even have Shougo left. After all he has done, he’d deserve nobody to get close to him anymore, to waste away in the most_ absolute _and miserable solitude, to macerate in that hate he has called on himself. He would deserve that, yet the other is still there with him_ , in him _, and offers him far more he dared to wish for._

_Haizaki suddenly trembles, and Akashi, in the midst of the numb of pain that’s burning his body, feels his teeth digging deeper in that flesh when he loses control and releases himself into him, after minutes that seemed like eternity. The albino lets himself fall on the bed and on his little body, panting, and Seijuro leaves him be silently, but spies on his face, now laying on the mattress beside his, and studies it._

_Shougo_ _is not his type, with the piercings and those sharp eyes and the mouth that’s too big and the too deep voice. Shougo told him he has always liked him, offered him hospitality and to take care of everything, had sex with him already thrice, has waited for him for two years – six, counting since their first meeting in middle school –._

_When the grip on his wrists loosens, revealing the sleep that is taking the albino away, Akashi slips his hand out of those fingers and ignores the purplish bruises just blooming on his skin to bring his arms awkwardly around the other, in a clumsy and embarrassed attempt at a hug._

_Haizaki is not his type, but he’ll try to love him anyway, because he deserves it._

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi opened his eyes slowly, secretly fighting to keep his breath in check and his mind fixed on the image of the white ceiling above his head, in the faint hope to calm his heartbeat before Midorima broke in yelling about heart-failures and who knew what else.

The memories from the past had a bittersweet taste, confused, one that was impossible to deem pleasant or not. They always left him shocked, especially when they took him by surprise during sleep, like that time, because the warmth of the feelings he felt for Shougo was cloudy with the instinctive reactions of his body, still partially unable to overcome the fact that his partner’s pleasure had to correspond a certain level of pain. It was normal, natural, and rationally Seijuro had learned. Established relationships, between adults, those that reached living together, had different needs than those of the adolescents. There were new balances and duties to attend and often sacrifices to make. It wasn’t all flowers and sparkles like films and books had fun letting people believe; to have a couple work needed far more effort than what it seemed.

He took another breath and then, collecting all that bit of energy he had left after his father’s blow – and that hurt, a lot – he bent the arms and tried to sit up. He needed to show himself awake and in full strength, so that Shintarou didn't decide to postpone his discharging, multiplying inexorably the problems he would have to face later at home. He could do it, he kept on telling himself. It wasn’t that hard, and he had seen worse. Some nightmare trying to confuse him was nothing.

He fixed the sheets around him, at least the best he could despite his body under them, and so caught up in his work, he didn’t notice the new-comer until the other closed the door behind him. He lifted his gaze, looking for Midorima’s frame, but his eyes widened when they met a short figure, still little even if a bit taller and with wider shoulders than he remembered.

Kuroko ran a hand through his messy blue hair, trying vainly to fix the rats’ nest it had become after his sleeping on the plane and the crazy running to the hospital. In the end, giving up, he let the arm fall and turned his whole attention to the guy in the bed, even without moving a step toward him.

“Hi, Akashi-kun.”

Akashi felt like drowning in that far too familiar voice, apathetic and polite, yet limpid in the silence of the room.

A “… Tetsuya…” slipped out of his lips before he could stop himself.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Kise slowly bit the lowest phalanx of his index finger as soon as he laid his lips on his entwined hands. The elbows planted on the knees were starting to create a quite painful pressure due to the back bent over and the weight on them, but the anxiety he felt was such, it forced his brain to automatically delete every thought that didn’t involve Akashi or Kuroko.

From his dominant position on his feet to the blonde’s left, Aomine spied on him with a dark expression on his face, but said nothing. Silently, he loosened the arms he had crossed before his chest and brought one to scratch his head nonchalantly. The other, though, he laid on Ryouta’s shoulder.

Nijimura discretely spied on their gesture, but didn’t point it out and remained sitting on the floor beside the door to Akashi’s room, ignoring the glares from the nurse that already twice in the past days had asked him not to sit there.

Momoi, at Kise’s left, seemed to be too caught up in contemplating something immensely sad painted on the palm of his hands to notice the rare affectionate gesture her childhood friend was giving, and Takao, nervously marching back and forth in the corridor, was glaring at the floor with a frown, muttering who knew what between his clenched teeth.

His murmurs were shared far too early, however, as soon as his patience ran out – just ten, maybe fifteen seconds after Tetsuya entered the room – and he turned to the others with an anxious: “What if he doesn’t listen to him? If he doesn’t say anything to him either?!”

“Takao,” Midorima tried to say, laying against the wall beside the door, to the opposite side of it than Shuuzou and in front of Momoi, but his voice was strange, and it wasn’t possible to understand if it was a consolation but with no words to add or a scolding that was too tired to be kept on.

Not knowing, Kazunari, too, laid against the wall heavily, right beside his boyfriend and resumed staring at the floor. 

He couldn’t say he _liked_ Akashi, to be honest, but what they had done to him was… _sick_. Dammit, when Shin-chan called to tell him what had happened, he hadn’t believed it! After all, who would have?! But then he had seen everything and… Takao had never, and still didn’t, thought he was ‘lucky’ because simply he didn’t believe it should have been a matter of luck to find a lover that wouldn’t beat him to a pulp from morning to evening. Sure thing, he, too, had his relationship troubles, obviously. His boyfriend was a rude tsundere and practically a mythomaniac, obsessed with the horoscope and Stakhanovite to the extreme, and it was even true that he lost his patience and yelled at him almost once every seven and a half minutes – not that he didn’t do anything to deserve it – but, fuck, Shin-chan would _never_ lift _a finger_ on him, never. He might call him an idiot, scold him continuously, but beating him?! No, it wasn’t even thinkable; he couldn’t even imagine it.

Instinctively, led by those thoughts, Kazunari moved the weight of his body all on the left leg ‘till bending a bit to that side. Then he let his head dangle a bit and laid it on Midorima’s shoulder, finding comfort – and not fear – in the height difference between them. He half-closed his eyes because they were filled with images he didn’t like, but he opened them immediately when he felt the muscle under his cheek move for a second, and then a delicate warmth enveloped his left fingers. It took him a moment to realize the doctor had pulled a hand out of a pocket to hold his.

Midorima didn’t look at his lover even when he felt those irises piercing his profile to find an expression, but grabbed a bit more, till when the other held his hand back.

He could imagine what Kazu was thinking. At least, he was used to attempting to read his head, and even if more often than not the other managed to surprise him, he was sure he was able to in that moment. After all, he was probably considering what everybody was, too.

_W_ _hat would I do if I was Akashi? What would I do if I was Kuroko?_

Shintarou didn’t know, but he knew he would rather cut his own arm off than slap Kazunari, for as annoying as he could be in more than an occasion.

He held tighter Takao’s hand and stood silent, his ears focused to catch even the slightest sound from the inside of the room.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wanted Kuroko, I gave you Kuroko. As always, I regret nothing, not even the cliffhanger. v.v
> 
> See you,
> 
> Agap
> 
> P.S.: Tumblr: agapantoblu.tumblr.com


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuroko tries. He really tries.

**__Chapter_9__ **

 

Kuroko stood still, hearing his name being called, but not because it bothered him. It was the tone that hurt him a bit: the absolute shock and the fact that the other seemed completely unable to believe he was there, the stain of fear at the bottom of that picture in dark and exploding shades, confused, too. Normally it was absolutely impossible to take Akashi by surprise; also, it was painful to think that the other hadn’t even considered the possibility of the phantom being worried, too, coming to meet him or to ask how he was. They shared a past, yet it seemed those memories had no value left at all.

Staring at his ex-boyfriend sitting on the bed, with a butterfly needle still in his arm – _as precaution_ , Midorima said – and a huge terror in his eyes, Tetsuya felt again the same violent feeling that shook him when Aomine had called to refer what had happened. Fury, an indiscriminating need to take revenge on whoever dared to raise their hands on his friend, such a dense hatred that it seemed pitch ready to swallow him all, a wrath that was only fueled by the way Akashi kept on staring at him with his breath always faster and more irregular and his hands clenched on the sheets as if not to let him fall who knew where.

Tetsuya mentally thanked his own mask and slowly approached the other, keeping his eyes on him and his hands relaxed and abandoned so as not to scare him. He laid a hand on the backrest of the chair beside the bed and moved it a bit to sit closer. Seijuro jerked, and he pretended not to notice. He promised himself to punch the wall once he was out of the room.

“It’s good to see you again, Akashi-kun,” he said instead, slowly, with nothing that could give away his troubled thoughts in that apathetic voice. “How are you feeling today?”

Seijuro needed a moment to register the meaning of those words, because his mind was stuck on the timber of that voice, that known and strange warmth in its cold tone. It was so beautiful and talked about so many things already fading in his mind: the popsicles after school and the annoying milkshakes and the vanilla-flavoured kisses that would have been disgusting with anyone but Tetsuya; the nervous mutterings and the silly bickering in the background of a single “I love you” stolen from a basketball training; the secret glances in the locker room and the flashes of white sweat-coated skin; the humid feeling of holding someone’s hand for hours and the wet one of saliva dripping down a chin; the photos taken by surprise with furry ears or terrible hoods; and the jokes and the questions and the whispers nobody cared about.

Akashi shook his head suddenly with the harsh need to slap himself. He couldn’t do that. He shouldn’t even dare think about Tetsuya that way! He had Haizaki; he was taken!

When he lifted his gaze, Tetsuya was already waiting patiently for an answer without pressuring or hushing him. In spite of himself, he had to admit that was one of the things he had most appreciated in his lover during the years.

“I’m…” he hesitated, because his voice was raw, almost broken, and gulped, “I’m fine.” Kuroko nodded, his expression not changing in the slightest, but Akashi knew him well enough to still be able to spot the signs, like the particular trembling of his pupils for a second or the little snapping of the left index. There were no doubts. “You’re angry,” he murmured, moving his gaze instinctively to his own lap and to the hands he had crossed on it.

“Yes.”

Merciless. 

Seijuro nodded. He hadn’t done anything to Tetsuya recently, so he was probably still furious for what had happened in their third year of middle school and first of high school. He couldn’t blame the other; that was exactly the kind of things someone remembered forever and never let go of.

“I’m sorry,” he said then, because what could he do if not apologize? 

“I’m not angry at you, Akashi-kun.” 

Seijuro lifted his gaze to the guy beside him, surprised, and stared for a moment. He had uncombed hair, and it seemed like the beard had been cut hurriedly, uncaringly. The white shirt he was wearing was wrinkled, and the black pants seemed to be the only ‘healthy’ thing in his dressing, had it not been for how they looked with the blue and white sneakers. It wasn’t like Kuroko to show up in those conditions, the patient thought, confused, but then he widened his eyes.

“Did you…run here?” he asked, even more shocked when Tetsuya nodded.

“My airplane landed a little while ago,” he admitted. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come here sooner, but there had been troubles at the check-in.”

Akashi frowned, surprised, but the calmness of the talking forbade him from stiffening too much.

“Where were you?” he simply asked, laying a bit more against the pillows on the headboard to create a backrest for him to sit up.

Without being asked to, the former phantom player stretched out to fix one of the cushions, ignoring the way Akashi flinched at the movement, before sitting back and answering absentmindedly with the report of his ‘experience’ in Korea that earned him two weeks in jail and one locked up in a hotel. Akashi realized the gravity of the situation, and he felt awful at the thought of _what could have happened_ , but he still couldn’t help a little smile at the thought of Kuroko, _that Kuroko_ , suddenly turned into a master of international espionage. There was something in that image that was terribly realistic and believable.

“I’m surprised your misdirection didn’t work,” he mocked lightly, and the little tic at the corner of the other’s mouth let him know the phantom would have pouted if only he wasn’t so apathetic.

Tetsuya was happy to know that Seijuro was relaxing a bit with him, as long as he wasn’t the object of the talk, but he knew there was no time left. He had never been one to beat around the bush, but in such a delicate situation for some reason he was hesitant, maybe because the anger still blazing in his chest prevented him from thinking lucidly or maybe because of the strange knot in his stomach, making it turn and toss anxiously.

“I was too restless for it to work,” he answered, and despite everything, his voice came out calm and serene, still like the eyes he kept on Akashi’s face to catch any slight changing of the expression. Before the minimal frowning of the other, Tetsuya elaborated, “They had just found you in the ER. Aomine-kun had called me to tell me what had happened. Both he and Midorima-kun sounded extremely worried, and I panicked.”

The patient’s hands jerked a little, and to hide it, they clenched on the sheets. Kuroko, even if noticing, didn’t shift his focus from those red irises. He waited long for an answer, but in the end with a dull ache to his heart, Seijuro moved his gaze to lay it back again on his own fingers. Such a strange and submissive behaviour made Tetsuya wish to punch the wall once more, but he restrained himself.

“Akashi-kun,” he called instead, lowering his voice a bit to not give away the rage vibrating in it. No reaction. “Akashi-kun.” Seijuro moved his eyes to the wall at the opposite side from where his host sat, and he strived to observe the sky out the window without associating that shade with his former lover. “Akashi-kun, please…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Dry and neat, his voice seemed to try to draw a line between himself and the other, a tall and huge wall, but Kuroko didn’t allow him to. 

“Akashi-kun, _please,_ ” he repeated, bending forward to call on himself the other’s eyes, “This is all wrong; try to understand it. I know what you think, but whoever did this surely doesn’t care about you.”

In retrospective, thinking about it, Kuroko guessed that probably those words were the mistake that gave the start to the chain of disasters that came after, but when he stretched an hand and brought to touch the other’s, Seijuro immediately flinched back, suddenly. 

He was clenching his teeth and refusing to meet the phantom’s eyes, but he didn’t manage to hold his words back. 

“You don’t know anything,” he hissed. It was true, they didn’t know anything, nor Tetsuya nor anyone of the others! They didn’t even know who his boyfriend was, but they were ready to have his head, and for what? Because he had exaggerated a bit?! “You know nothing, so quit judging.”

Kuroko widened his eyes, absolutely unable to process the reaction of the other, and with the hand still hanging mid-air, unable both to reach that crouching body and to give up for its refusal. Akashi’s voice was harsh, angry, and his grip on the sheets was more violent. Was he really defending the man who reduced him to that?! Midorima had obviously warned him before letting him in, but Kuroko hadn’t really _realized_ how grave the situation was.

A strange shiver slipped down his back, weakening and slowing down his muscles, as if anesthetizing them for a second, but he tried anyway.

“Akashi-kun, this is not about judging…!”

“It is, instead!” Seiuro’s yell, his voice high for the first time in weeks, interrupted Kuroko and made the door slam open behind him, letting in Midorima’s and Nijimura’s shadows at the entrance. Akashi ignored them, or maybe he didn’t even notice them, too focused on his own hands. “You only did that, nothing else!” he kept on, unable to bite his tongue. Shougo had been the only one to help him when things had gone downhill and where were they?! Now they came to be the great heroes, but when he had touched the bottom, they hadn’t cared at all! “ _Your boyfriend is a monster, your boyfriend is bad and evil, your boyfriend wants to hurt you, you should leave him…_ Why?!” He lifted his gaze, looked for Tetsuya’s pale blue eyes for the first time on purpose and challenged their big and shocked frame while he sharpened his. “Because he made a mistake?! It happened, but it’s normal! It could have happened to anybody! You spent years telling me nobody’s perfect, and now you’re all on him because he lost his control once! Who has never lost it?!” 

“ _A mistake?!_ ” Kuroko turned immediately, trying to stop the unavoidable, as soon as he heard Aomine’s heavy voice filling the room angrily, but the cop was faster in approaching the bed and pointing at the body under those sheets with an open gesture of the arm. “This is a _mistake_ for you?! It is _losing control_?!”

Akashi’s shoulders curved a bit at that blow, but he didn’t back off.

“You’re the last person who can come teaching me about couple dynamics, Aomine!” he hissed. “I don’t allow someone whose longest relationship has been with a porn magazine to tell me how to manage mine!”

“Yours?! That’s not a fucking relationship, Akashi!” Nijimura intervened. His eyes widened, and the weak attempt of Kuroko to calm that attack was covered by Kise’s voice.

“Akashicchi, do you really think that going in and out every hospital in the city is part of the dynamic of a couple? That it is _a one time_ mistake?” The model’s voice was low and dark, less accusing than the others’ surely, but it still cut deeper. “Akashicchi, I don’t know how it is to live with someone, but I don’t think that’s how it should work.”

Seijuro bit his tongue. “You know nothing about how it is.”

“But I do, nanodayo.”

Akashi jerked, feeling a shock of betrayal straight to his chest, but when he moved his gaze to Midorima, the other held his with no hesitation. His hand, the red-head noticed, laced instinctively to the one of the brunette that had been beside him the whole time, slightly hidden as if not to meddle with something that wasn’t his business.

“Takao and I started living together right after high school,” he said, serious despite the slight blush on his cheeks. “And the only reason I’ve ever gone in and out a hospital has been studying and work.” _Midorima, shut up…_ “None of us ever hurt the other, Akashi, because this is not how it works in a couple. If one of the two says no, it’s no and stop; the other has to accept it. He can’t insist or raise his hands.” _Shut up…_ “You’re right. We’ve done nothing but judge your ‘boyfriend,’” _Shut up…!_ “-but this is because _clearly_ he’s hurting yo-…”

“SHUT UP!”

They all jerked, only Kuroko reacted the other way, turning suddenly again toward Akashi, but the other had his fists clenched, not on the sheets but a bit lifted, and his back bent forward. His shoulders were trembling in unleashed tension, and his mouth was a thin harsh and defying line. Tetsuya felt like dying when he realized that Seijuro, after a month of passive acceptance, was ready to fight, but only for that same person who broke him.

It was so painfully ironic that the phantom didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, and thus he stood there, the apathetic mask on his face broken into a stupefied expression, listening to Seijuro who was hissing dangerously.

“You don’t understand. You don’t _want_ to understand!” Had his voice broken? Was he perhaps…? “You’ve never liked him, and so you’re all ready to take it out on him, as always!” Was he crying? Akashi violently ran an arm across his own eyes, deleting the tears. 

 

_Quit crying, Akashi! Don’t be a fucking pipsqueak!_

“This is not about liking or not, Akashi-kun, but…”

Kuroko stopped when Seijuro’s hands hurried to cover his ears. That refusal wounded him deeply, but not as much as the words that followed.

“…What?” he murmured, uncertain. He couldn’t have heard right, could he? Akashi didn’t…

“Go away!” the guy yelled again, instead, with his hands still pressed on his ears and eyes closed, locked to not let out a single tear.

In Seijuro’s head, the darkness lighted up in alternate flashes.

_He and Kuroko go shopping for basketball shoes together; the smell in the shop is familiar, and the reflections in the mirrors are funny; the short laughter warm them up more than the scarves they were wearing and that now lay abandoned on a stool._

“Go away!”

_Shougo comes home and throws him a bag with new clothes, just bought; they’re a bit large, but Akashi smiles all the same to himself because his boyfriend ripped his last shirt the previous evening, during a quarrel, and this is clearly his way – a bit rough – to apologize._

“I said go away!”

_Kuroko glares at him, arms crossed around the milkshake he’s holding to his chest, and no matter how much he tries, Akashi can’t take that unhealthy thing from him. When the phantom manages to slip into the elevator of the shopping centre before he can stop or follow him, Tetsuya sips insolently from his straw, staring at him straight in the eyes from behind the glass door that are bringing him up, out of reach, and Seijuro raises an eyebrow. He’ll get revenge for this._

“Go away!”

_Akashi folds carefully Shougo’s shirts. He had just learnt, has never done it before, and when he put away the last one and observes his ordinate work, he feels almost satisfied. He lays everything in the wardrobe and waits. The following morning, when Haizaki gets up and opens it, he pulls out a shirt and wears it without complaining. Seijuro feels so proud of himself that the handprints of slaps on his cheeks, reminder of the much too salty dinner of the previous evening, almost don’t hurt even as he smiles a bit._

“Go away…”

_Kuroko kisses him._

“… go away…”

_Haizaki kisses him._

“…go away.”

_Kuroko wraps his arms around his neck and digs the nails in his back, marking long red lines as he screams in pleasure._

“Go away!”

_Haizaki presses a hand on his head and pushes him forward to force him to take his manhood in deeper as he curses and releases._

“GO AWAY!”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi was screaming. He wouldn’t stop, with hands clenched in his hair and eyes closed that couldn’t stop the tears; he kept on screaming to go away, but it wasn’t clear if it was for those around him or whatever monster was now haunting his mind. The monitor beside him went crazy, showing a heartbeat and a breathing time completely irregular. There was something wrong.

Midorima jerked forward almost immediately, grabbing Akashi by his shoulders without moving his eyes from the machines, trying to force him to lay down but without hurting him. Not to scare him had lost its priority; it was already too late.

When Seijuro, eyes widened at a terrifying nothing, opened his lips to get in big mouthfuls of air, as if he was choking, Midorima gritted his teeth.

_A panic attack_ , he diagnosed, and suddenly he turned to the others behind him, all scared almost as much as his patient.

“Get out of here!” he ordered. It was impossible to decide who among them was really responsible for the attack, maybe all of them or only one, but Shintarou had no time to choose. “Everyone!”

He didn’t wait to check, but with different times and feelings, in the end everyone left the room, and the doctor was left alone to try to calm down the red-haired guy wriggling under his hands.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

It was enough for the handle to lower a bit for every person crowding the corridor to jump on their feet, tense and eyes fixed on Midorima who was closing Akashi’s room door behind himself.

“How is he?!” both Aomine and Takao asked in a chorus, preceding all the others. Kuroko was silent beside his former light, but the same question reflected in his eyes was louder than all the others’ voices put together.

Shintarou’s first answer was a heavy sigh. Then he fixed the glasses on his nose.

“Now he has calmed down, but it’s too soon to face him again. Even just seeing us would probably lead to another crisis, and we really can’t afford that. He’s still too weak, nanodayo.” Midorima’s voice changed when he got into doctor-mode. It turned more adult and firmer, even more reassuring in a sense, but most of all it assumed a shade of authority that made it impossible to contradict him. “As for now, let’s leave him be. You all go home, and tomorrow we’ll talk to him again.”

Aomine and Kise shared a glance before both looking at Tetsuya, but he was, in turn, locking eyes with Nijimura, who nodded before turning to Shintarou.

“What about his discharging?” he asked. “Shouldn’t it be by the end of the week, in theory?”

The young trainee straightened his shoulders and proved himself the firmest while declaring, as if reading from a medicine book, “It isn’t possible to discharge a patient after they show mental issues or self-harming behaviours. The standard procedure asks for an extension of the hospitalization ‘till an obligatory check-up with a psychologist from the hospital, who will have the task to decide if allowing the patient’s discharging and under which circumstances.”

Takao showed his boyfriend a sad smile. It was sure a good excuse, but…

“Do you think a psychologist will extend his hospitalization?” he asked. “With nobody triggering the panic attack, Akashi is far from crazy. Everything aside, he’s still extremely lucid. I mean, he’s still managing not to give away anything about his abuser.”

“He’s probably still sane enough to trick even a doctor, probably,” Aomine grunted nodding. “And our opinion is…how did your chief put it, Midorima?”

“ _Biased,_ ” Shintarou spat, as if deeply offended by the insinuation.

Silence fell heavy on the little group, but in the end Kise’s mobile broke it, warning of an incoming text.

“It’s Murasakibaracchi,” he informed, even if lowly. “He says he’s just arrived at the station, but there’s a strike so I have to go get him.”

Shintarou nodded.

“You all go home. We have some days more, and it’s already something,” he ordered. “I’ll go talk to the department responsible to tell him what happened and then to the psychologist who’ll have to check on Akashi, and we’ll see if we come up with something.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi kept silently listening to the murmurs outside his room even if those seemed to echo in his head like bugs, creating a painful and heavy sound that fogged his thoughts and made him unable to do anything but stare at the ceiling. The heartbeat was regular, the breath cadenced and deep. There was nothing that could give away what had happened just a little before, if not some more wrinkles in the sheets covering him.

Thinking about sheets, Akashi realized he was cold. He turned on his side and bent the legs to his chest, but it didn’t help much, and the knees got stuck in his nightgown, lifting it to his waist.

Feeling his legs naked, Akashi thought about Shougo. He imagined his hand caressing them, from the knee up to the thigh, the cheek and then downward again to spread them. He imagined doing it with bliss, as so many times had happened, and remembered the feeling of scorching hotness from having another body so close, brushing against his, wrapping around him completely. He imagined that warmth for a long while, ‘till when the voices and steps outside his door died down, then he opened his eyes.

He lifted the blankets and stretched his legs before bringing them over the mattress, welcoming the coldness against his bare skin, so he got up. He wobbled a bit, still shaken by the crisis of a little before, but he regained his balance soon and started walking step by step, slowly, to the room door. He waited for a moment before opening it, to make sure, but when he finally peeked out, nobody he knew, if not a nurse who had helped him once or twice, was in the corridor.

It didn’t surprise him that much to discover there was no surveillance. After his behaviour a little ago, it was just understandable that the others were angry with him and left.

He walked as if through an endless layer of water so thick that, when he finally reached the free phone for patients hanging on the wall in front of his door slightly to the right, it seemed years had passed. With that same slowness, he automatically typed in a string of numbers, brought the receiver to his ear, and waited.

It took eight or nine rings, but in the end an insolent voice he knew well answered.

“ _Who’s this?_ ” 

“Shougo,” he whispered, but the name still came out like a choked wailing, filled with the same tears that were once more falling down his face, making him lift a hand to grab the red locks on his forehead, as if to create a curtain to hide him from sight. “Please, take me away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you Kuroko, I never said he would solve everything with a snap of his fingers v.v 
> 
> Also, I know this may sound sudden, but if you think Akashi had the instinct to go back to Shougo even right after his meeting with Masaomi.
> 
> Oooookay. See you next time!
> 
> Agap


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haizaki is a bastard. That's the only way I can summarize this chapter.

**__Chapter_10__ **

 

Midorima sighed, exhausted, as he exited the elevator. Hands secured in his pockets and a cold expression on his face, he strived not to let out his disappointment for the meeting that had just finished. Even if he had gotten the full collaboration of his department head for prolonging Akashi’s hospitalization, he had run around in vain for almost twenty minutes, looking for the psychologist his friend had been assigned to, only to find out it was the man’s day off. He sighed again, stopping before the nurses reception before Akashi’s room to sign some papers. He would have rather talked to the specialist that day, especially after Seijuro’s crisis, but it looked like he would have to wait for the following morning. He wasn’t sure he could do it.

He sighed a third time, drawing the worried gaze of a nurse behind the counter, and when he realized, he shook his head. What was he doing?! He could manage Akashi for a little more; he could take care of the other as they had done during the whole month! It was just a night, after all. He straightened up and laid the papers down, but then he turned to the woman still looking at him.

“I need the module to require a psychiatric check up,” he said, in all seriousness.

The poor soul jerked, but in the end hurried on her feet to pick the paper from one of the drawers behind her. Midorima stole a glance at his friend’s room.

“Do you want the one for Akashi-san’s discharge too?”

Shintarou turned slowly, holding back the umpteenth sigh, but he shook his head while taking the paper offered to him.

“No, this is for him. His hospitalization has been prolonged.”

For some reason, the nurse didn’t allow him to slip the document from her hands. He frowned, confused, but lifted his eyes to the woman just to find two equally shocked hazel eyes.

“But…” she hesitated, not really getting what was going on, but in the end she spilled in a low and trembling voice filled with guilt, “…Akashi-san left the hospital ten minutes ago… He said you were telling the department head, and I thought…”

The pen in Midorima’s other hand fell to the ground, helpless, as the other widened his eyes. He didn’t even allow the nurse to finish her sentence, but suddenly he snapped to Seijuro’s room.

_It’s not possible, it can’t be possible, it can’t…!_

Even his thoughts froze with his body on the room’s doorstep, leaving him paralyzed with his eyes locked on the tidied but empty bed, on the carefully folded nightgown lying at the mattress end, on the complete nothingness.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Seijuro stole a glance at the trees bending under the raging wind of that morning, but he didn’t dare to lift his head, pretending to be still caught up in staring at his own hands folded on his lap.

Haizaki, at the driver’s seat, had yet to say a single word since his lover had entered the car and was driving silently without even looking at him.

“Shougo…”

“ _At home,_ Seijuro. We’re talking at home.”

Seijuro pulled his lips in a thin line and went back to staring at his own pale thin fingers. The heart in his chest was beating like crazy.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

The jingling of the keys carelessly thrown in a little cup beside the entrance and the heavy stomping of Shougo’s feet in the apartment weren’t loud enough to overcome the furious beating in his ears, but still the dry sound of the door lock as he himself closed it behind his back managed to take path in Akashi’s head, conquering every inch.

Just over the entrance, the one-room floor was still the same as when Seijuro…fainted? Yes, probably, because he honestly didn’t remember how he had gotten to the hospital. Still, in the sink were a couple of kind-of-washed dishes, Shougo’s clothes were scattered on the floor and the bed before the kitchenette, with only the lunch table between them, was rumpled. The bathroom door, to his right, was open, but Akashi couldn’t see inside. Not that he wanted, honestly, but his eyes slipped all the same to that single separated room in the apartment.

 

_“Seijuro, fuck this shit, open this fucking door! Now!”_

_There’s blood, a lot. It’s falling from his head and stains his face and shirt and hands and… The bathroom is spinning all around him, why does it spin? It shouldn’t spin… It’s hot, asphyxiating, it must be the reason why breathing hurts so much._

_He tries to take a mouthful of air, and the pain is so harsh that he falls on his knees on the floor, his back still against the locked door. Shougo’s voice, angry behind that frail defense, makes him sob, and his hands instinctively rise to cover his ears._

_He doesn’t want to run from Haizaki, and he doesn’t want to hide from him, but it’s clear that the other has drunk too much and can’t realize when he reaches the limit anymore. He can’t recognize when to stop, and this time, Akashi knows it, he may even kill him._

_“SEIJURO!”_

_He curls up even more, lays the whole weight of his little body against the door, and mentally he sends a silent request for help, not really knowing whom to._

A violent sound made him jerk and ripped him from his memories, and he turned to Shougo, who now had a hand clenched into a fist and a smashed glass bottle at his feet. Akashi gulped.

“Shougo, I’m sorry…”

“My ass, you’re sorry!” Seijuro jerked – even if he was expecting his lover’s reaction, the sudden movement caught him by surprised – and he made the mistake of lifting his gaze. Haizaki’s head turned in that moment, and the expression on his face was a mixture of rage and disgust that made him feel ashamed. “If you _really_ were sorry,” the albino hissed, “you would have at least deigned to _call_ with that bloody phone you used today! But no! It’s a fucking month I have no fucking idea of where you are! I have some difficulties believing you’re that _sorry_!”

“That’s not it!” Akashi felt another wave of shame for how begging and pleading his voice sounded in those three words, but still Haizaki didn’t let him finish.

“Fuck you!” he cursed, getting close in barely three steps, and before Seijuro could calm him down, the other grabbed him by the throat with a hand and lifted him enough to force him to stand on his tiptoes. He was so light, after all, that the bigger man could have brought him up three feet from the ground with a single arm. Instead, the man slammed him hard against the wall between the entrance and the bathroom, hurting his back and ripping a moan out of him. Then he got closer again and grabbed the red locks of his fringe in a tight fist, pulling them to force the other to lift his head and look him in the eye as he kept on. “To me it looks like you remembered I exist only when they threw you out, and you needed a drive back home, huh?!”

Akashi’s head was wavering, unstable, and his troubled breathing was waking up the familiar pain from the ribs, still weak even if back in shape, but the guy managed to keep lucid and forced himself to open his eyes despite the pain to his hair. His hands instinctively stretched to Haizaki’s chest, but there they stayed, without pushing him away.

Shougo was worried. It was understandable, and he was…happy? He didn’t want to deny it was his fault and that he should have handled the situation differently, but if only he could explain…

“T-They didn’t discharge me,” he managed to murmur despite the pain, striving not to raise his voice as to not upset the other even more.

Haizaki looked taken aback for a moment, and he lifted an eyebrow skeptically, muttering a confused “Huh?” but he didn’t let him go. Akashi decided to try all the same.

“They said I had to let a psychologist visit me before leaving,” he said. It was the truth, after all, only not whole. He hated hiding things from his lover, but how could he tell him about Kuroko?! Shougo wasn’t good at handling jealousy. It was his biggest flaw.

For some seconds there was silence, and Seijuro stood still, motionless in the other’s grip, waiting for the consequences of what he had just said. It surprised him to hear Haizaki’s laughter.

“So this is how it went?” The albino released the locks in his grip to run his hand through the littler guy’s strands, caressing him carefully and at the same time messing his hair up even more. His voice turned lower and slower, calm, but his free hand laid against the wall beside Akashi’s head, caging him with his body. Seijuro felt vaguely…like suffocating in there, but he pretended not to and kept on staring at his lover as the other went on. “So?” he was saying, but the tone was a mixture of comprehension and derision that added fuel to the other’s shame, “Did the doctor scare you?”

“…Yes.” The worst thing was that he was telling the truth.

After his first year of high school and all the matter of his double personality, Masaomi had put his son under tons and tons of psychological and psychiatric visits. He compelled him to talk with perfect strangers who tried to decipher his mind when it was in the most absolute chaos and forced him to take medicines after medicines, to the point that the Winter Cup jury had been unsure about allowing him to take part in the tournaments with the doping he was enduring. Seijuro remembered that period as a real hell, with continuous invading questions tormenting him and his phone constantly telling him it was time for another pill and… No, he didn’t want to go through that whole ordeal again, for no reason in the world. And Shougo knew it, because he was the one who helped him out of that world that was closing up on him like a huge cell with white stuffed walls. 

Shougo who, kind, moved the hand from his hair to his cheek, caressing him slowly.

“Poor little Seijuro…” he whispered, _emphasizing_ the first name of his lover and making him shiver. Akashi clenched his teeth, and his hands still on his boyfriend’s chest stiffened just a bit, but didn’t move or try to push the other. The albino, instead, got even closer, ‘till their bodies met perfectly, and grabbed his chin to force eye contact when Seijuro tried to move his head to a side. “It must have been hard for you.”

Akashi didn’t answer, but despite the grip on his face, he moved his gaze instinctively to a side. It was true he wouldn’t have met a psychologist for any reason in the world, never again, but in that month there had been other things. Aomine and Kise’s quarreling, for example, or Aida’s words; there had been Murasakibara’s sweets and Midorima’s shrieks when he found them in his room; there had been Takao and Himuro who weren’t involved in any way but had checked up on him anyway and… 

Haizaki’s hot breath made him stiffen, blocking his thoughts, when it landed slowly on his neck skin, right under the ear.

“Don’t worry,” the other was murmuring, “now you’re _home_.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

“ _What?! How the fuck did he vanish?!”_

“He waited for us to go away, passed through the nurses, and reached the car park, nanodayo.” Midorima’s voice was a low and threatening growl, burning with rage toward the person it belonged to more than the one it was talking to, but his eyes and his head stood focused on the screen before him. Its reflection on his lenses showed a single photogram from a camera of little quality.

Aomine spat a river of curses through the receiver, words that would have sent a sailor back to his mother crying, and Midorima let him be as he clicked on the mouse to bring up the video of some seconds. When he found what he was looking for, he finally stopped the other.

“I’ve got it, nanodayo,” he announced, and the only answer he received was the rustling of paper, the tingling of some pencils, and the silence of the cop. “It’s a black car, subcompact,” he listed. “I have no idea which model this is, but I have a bit of the plate. I can send you the image; can you…?”

“ _I’ll find it,_ ” Daiki hissed, stopping him. “ _Even if it is the fucking last thing I do, I’ll find that bastard._ ”

Midorima simply nodded, listening carefully to the sound of a cruelly snapped pencil.

_This Ain’t Love_

 

“Shou-”

Akashi bit his tongue as soon as the tip of the other’s started slipping down his neck, from his earlobe to the clavicle, chasing after the hem of his shirt as it was slowly pushed down by a raw bigger hand, undressing his shoulder, arm, elbow. The tongue stopped there and went back up, to turn to the other side, and Seijuro kept on biting, even when the bitter taste of blood flooded his mouth, and he closed his eyes as he felt a new humid line of saliva being drawn on his skin.

His legs were getting weak now that the adrenaline for his escape and the avoided fight was fading away, and for some reason his knees had started trembling, unstable, and threatening to let him fall any moment. The air was cold despite the window being closed, and his exposed body parts were starting to complain. In his head reigned the chaos.

Somehow, as the other sleeve slipped down his arm, he thought about Nijimura and Kuroko. Maybe because he hadn’t had the time before or maybe just by chance, he couldn’t tell, but his mind stumbled on them, on those equally cold coloured yet warm eyes, on the paleness of those hands stretching toward him to caress his head or fix his pillow.

Haizaki let him with his sleeves wedged around his wrists and his shirt wrinkled behind his back, at his stomach height, to go back to his neck and bite the soft flesh at the junction with the clavicle.

“…N-…”

Nijimura had been the first whose orders he had ever followed, and Kuroko had been his first boyfriend. Haizaki, somehow, was the second in both. Then why did it feel so different?

Shougo made him detach his hips from the wall, but not his head and shoulders, forcing him to arch his back. Then he slipped his hands under his shirt and made them run on the whole skin before crawling to the hem of his trousers. _Under_ the hem of his trousers. With his mouth, he reclaimed the other’s.

Was it the age? Akashi wondered, unable not to stiffen when his lover grabbed his flesh harshly. Was that what made the feeling so different? But even Nijimura and Kuroko had grown up and changed, yet their gestures toward him still had the same delicacy…

“…N-n-…!”

Was it Haizaki? He had lived in a particular way, been a delinquent for a lot of time, so maybe that was why he didn’t know how to be as gentle as them? Yes, that was it, he was sure. It was only because of that! Shougo cared about him, he didn’t hurt him on purpose! Sometimes he did it, but because he didn’t realize!

“…Seijuro…”

Akashi heard his name being called in a pant as his boyfriend detached from him to bend the head and suck on one of his earlobes. He had always found it disgusting, but Shougo liked it, so he had always let him.

Now, though, Midorima’s voice echoed bossily in his ears.

_“If one of the two says no, it’s no and stop.”_

 

“…N-No!”

 

_This Ain_ _’_ _t Love_

**_Aomine-kun:_ **

_-This is the situation. Midorima is searching in the videos of the other security cameras to see if there_ ' _s any other picture of the car, but let_ ' _s not put hope in that._

_-I_ ' _m working on the piece of driving plate he gave me, but in the meanwhile you keep your eyes open: Akashi went to a fucking lot of hospitals, but all here in Tokyo. He must be somewhere here!_

 

**_Momoi-san:_ **

_-Dai-chan, send me everything you have about the hospitals and places where Akashi had been seen; I_ ' _ll try to see if I can come up with something._

 

**_Kise-kun:_ **

_-Murasakibaracchi and I are still at the station, Aominecchi. We'_ _re starting from here and searching the area._

_-If Akashicchi hasn'_ _t always reached the hospitals by car, maybe he used some public transport to rapidly reach further parts of the city._

_-It_ _'_ _s quite a bet, but maybe he lives somewhere nearby since the majority of trains depart from here, and it would be easier for him not to get noticed._

 

**_Nijimura-senpai:_ **

_-I’ll take the area around Ueno Park._

_-Akashi loved it and he talked about it with Momoi during the hospitalization. Maybe he met the bastard there._

 

**_Himuro-san:_ **

_-I'_ _m with Taiga. He'_ _s calling his ex-teammates to help and then we'_ _re taking Seirin'_ _s block and the red lights district._

 

**_Coach:_ **

_-They both have low rent prices and Akashi-kun seemed to be in difficulties. It_ ' _s worth a try._

_-Keep in mind the areas the guys have already checked when he was in the hospital: if they didn'_ _t find anything then, it'_ _s a waste of time to try again._

 

**_Takao-kun:_ **

_-I’ll take the block of his last recovery before this. He was really in bad condition, but he got to the hospital on his own: maybe he lives somewhere nearby._

Kuroko stared at the list of texts that kept turning on his phone, making it ring as he ran desperately to the district of Teiko middle school. He prayed that the school and its memories pushed Akashi’s melancholic spirit to stay close, but there were too many ‘maybe’s for him to feel even slightly reassured.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Haizaki’s face was weird. His mouth was half opened in a little surprised ‘O’ and his eyes slightly widened with eyelids blinking in a strange way, as if confused by the scene and determined to discover if it was real or only the result of something fallen on the retina who knew when.

Akashi’s breathing was heavy and fast, his chest lifting so much at every mouthful of air that it pressed against his lover’s, and the echo of his panting was blending with the regular ticking of a clock, breaking an otherwise heavy silence.

Seijuro gulped, but then he lifted his eyes to Haizaki, meeting his grey irises, and felt a wave of warmth spreading in his chest and drawing a little but shiny smile on his lips, shaping his face in a joyful expression.

He was right in the end! Shougo wasn’t as the others had described him. He was a perfectly normal boyfriend, like every other, like Midorima was for Takao! He had said ‘no,’ and the albino had stopped! All the things that happened in the past were just his fault then, because he had never thought about refusing clearly and because he had never talked before things went too far! It wasn’t his lover’s fault. He couldn’t know what he shouldn’t have done if he wasn’t told. It was normal!

Akashi tightened his grip a bit on his boyfriend’s shirt, to keep him close and erase the umpteenth echo of a voice from the bottom of his head. It was just an envious whisper that was trying to make him think it was all a mistake, but he had learned to discern reality from the lies in his mind. The voice couldn’t explain to him _why_ it was wrong to be with Shougo, thus it was surely a lie. Had it been the truth, there would have been a valid and clear reason for it.

Shintarou had been wrong, everyone had been. Shougo was a good person. Kuroko and Nijimura refused to see it, but truthfull-…

Akashi’s thoughts stopped suddenly when Haizaki threw his head backward and burst out laughing. For a moment the other lost his smile for a confused expression, but he took it back soon, even if more unsure and hesitant. When his laughter died and Shougo lifted his head again to look at him, Seijuro frowned a bit gently.

“Why…?” he tried to say, but he was forbidden from saying more than the first word of the sentence.

Haizaki’s gesture was clear, obvious, visible, but so… _unmotivated_ … that Akashi realized only after falling to the ground with a hand pressed on his cheek that his boyfriend had slapped him. 

On his knees on the floor, barely a step from the bed, he held himself up with his free arm to lift a bit and turn to his lover, but he didn’t dare to get up. His eyes widened and started to tear up even if the pain wasn’t that much – he had felt worse. It was more the surprise in his head and the comeback of a familiar fear to its nest in his stomach to shock him so much and to build drop by drop a supply of tears ready to fall.

_Why?!_ he couldn’t stop thinking, but all of him – body and mind – had at last learned from every blow, and after his attempt of a little ago, he couldn’t bring himself to say that word out loud again.

Haizaki was still snickering once in a while, like someone who had just heard such a funny joke that only remembering it was enough to laugh. He got closer to the lover he had just thrown on the ground, and Akashi, for some reason, moved the hand from his face to use it and the other to drag himself backward, trying to keep some distance. The bed stopped him, and Haizaki took advantage of the moment to grab him by the hair, ripping out a choked scream.

“‘ _N-No_ ’?” Shougo repeated, mimicking his voice in a disgustingly high and scared falsetto, even repeating the babbling he couldn’t help. Seijuro felt humiliation burning in his chest and opening the dams of his eyes, letting out the first two warning tears.

“Shougo…” he tried to call, even if he honestly didn’t know what to add, but Haizaki pulled him harsher and ripped away some little locks. Then he lifted his face and got even closer.

“Do you really think you have any right to run your mouth in these situations, Seijuro? _Really?!_ ”

Akashi widened his eyes even more as all the thoughts in his head ran to a single prayer. He was slapped again, but almost didn’t notice, too lost in the depths of his mind.

_No, no, no…_ That couldn’t be true, he knew Shougo! Why was he acting like that?! Nothing that could have made him angry had happened, so why was he taking it out on him?! He hadn’t done anything this time, really! Why?!

Haizaki was oblivious of his thoughts, but smiled at his shocked and scared expression, right before bending forward, bringing his face just some inches from his lover’s. 

“You’re nothing but a _whore_ , Seijuro,” he whispered lowly, calmly, spelling every word precisely, emphasizing the insult and taking pleasure in the jerk and loud broken wail this one stole from the littler guy. “You’re a _whore,_ ” he repeated, “and the only thing you can run your mouth on is my cock.”

Akashi closed his eyes as those vulgar words sank in his brain, digging scars miles long and deep like souls. He tried to sob something without even realizing, his boyfriend’s name and a vague uncertain plead, but Haizaki’s hand was fast on his lips, almost suffocating.

The grip on his hair vanished, and there was a subtle metallic sound, a fly that was opened. Then, Seijuro truly wished he could die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't say anything. This hurt me more than is hurting you, just so you know.
> 
> My baby T.T


	12. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things always stay painfully the same. Some others, at times, briefly _do_ change.

**__Chapter_11__ **

 

There was light. A lot and white, it entered the window to reflect briefly on the candid sheets as if on a wedding dress gown, brightening the room up, too much, blinding.

Akashi didn’t even notice. Laying on his left side, on the crumpled mattress and sweat-soaked blankets, he stared at his left hand laying on the pillow, palm up and slightly bent fingers, each one a bit more so that he could see every phalanx and wrinkle.

He had never felt so…bad. It was like he had broken – as if _someone_ had broken him – and everything that was in him before had flown out and gotten lost forever. It was awful. He didn’t even have the strength to move a single muscle, and not out of pain or tiredness, but simply because he couldn’t find a reason to do it. In any case, it would have been useless. Even if Shougo beat him, what would change? Even if they didn’t pay the bills, even if he never moved again, even if he simply laid there to starve to death, who would even _care_? Akashi had never felt like that before, or maybe yes, once, at the end of his first year of high school, but he didn’t want to think about that.

“So… Daddy paid a visit, huh?” Seijuro jerked a bit at the sudden voice reaching him, but something in his brain brought him to move his irises to the end of the bed, left corner pointing to the door, the angle that only a little before had stopped his escape. Shougo was on his feet behind the mattress, Akashi’s trousers with their pockets out-turned in one hand and in the other a cigarette between two fingers and Masaomi’s credit card between the remaining three. “What did you tell him about your being there?”

Akashi confusedly wondered why he had taken it. It had been an impulse. In the hurry and panic of the moment he had seen it on the bedside table, read his father’s name on the lucid plastic, and before he could even realize, the card was already securely in his pocket, and he was slipping into the elevator.

He nodded slightly, in silence, but brought his gaze back to his own fingers. Observing Shougo with his white hair uncombed, chest and legs naked, wearing only his boxers, was impossible. It had never happened before, but the mere sight of his lover was enough to make him feel nauseous.

Haizaki kept on staring at him, and Akashi didn’t return the gesture, eyes fixed on his fingers, but he forced himself to answer.

“Nothing, he didn’t ask anything.” His voice was so low, barely a whisper, but Seijuro didn’t even hear his own heartbeat anymore, and he didn’t have the strength to raise it. “He put the card on the table and left. I think he wanted to…make amends or something like that.”

Haizaki grunted something, and Akashi closed his eyes, pretending to be alone in a completely empty and dark room.

“Parents annoy the fuck out of everyone,” the albino commented, and Seijuro focused only on the sound of his trousers falling on the floor and the creaking of the bed lowering a bit under the weight of the guy sitting on the edge. “Did he give you the code?”

He lifted his eyelids only to find his lover turning the card in his fingers, and he felt the need to take it from him, but it was just a moment. He could already see how it would have ended. Haizaki would have gotten mad and raised his hand against him. He would have ended up in some hospital again and, after a while, would have come back home, and everything would have started back again at the next fight. It was useless, so he simply shook his head a bit, for as much as the pillow he was sinking in allowed him to.

“But I think I know it,” he forced himself to add. He remembered using that card more than once on his father’s account, and he was already used to remembering everything – a lapse would have been like a stain on his perfectness.

Haizaki stared at him, and for a moment he expected **a** hit or something because of his lacking eloquence, but instead, his lover shrugged and got up.

“We’ll see soon enough,” he commented. “There’s a cash point three blocks from here.”

Akashi’s body jerked, even if minimally, at those words, but the guy didn’t even strive to understand which emotion or thought corresponded that feeling. It didn’t matter in the end.

“Now?” he only asked, even if lowly and with no intonation.

Haizaki shrugged again, got up, and threw the card on the pillow right in front of his face before reaching for the lunch table and picking up a shirt and a pair of trousers from a chair backrest.

“It’s better to take everything we can now before dear daddy changes his mind and decides to empty the account or block the card,” he declared, moving back to the bed and stopping beside it. “The fridge is empty anyway, and there’s not a fucking beer left.” He smiled, but Akashi wasn’t looking, so he outstretched a hand to caress his face, and that innocuous gesture forced him instinctively to meet the albino’s eyes. “I’ll go get groceries, and you take the money,” he decided, and his smile went wider, “and then we can have some fun, okay?”

Seijuro gulped, but his head nodded on its own, and even if the gesture was minimal, it was still enough for Haizaki to retreat his hand and lock himself in the bathroom.

Akashi waited for a second, looking at the door behind his fingers, but then he forced himself to move and get up. The sheets slipped down his snowy, yet once more flowered with purple pansies and little red roses, skin, and the air touching it made him shiver, revealing his frailty. He stood silent while climbing down the bed and picking his boxers and jeans from the floor where Shougo had abandoned them. Bending, keeping balance, and slipping clothes on was a pathetic and painful feat. He reached for the wardrobe because the shirt he was wearing a little before couldn’t be used again since a sleeve had been ripped off. Seijuro wondered absentmindedly where it had ended up after Haizaki had pulled it out of his mouth and thrown it backward.

He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, but the cold kept on lashing at his arms, and in the end he gave up and stole Shougo’s black sweatshirt from under his gym bag, the one he had used two years before when he had gotten there.

He took only a second to whisper, just barely louder, an apathetic “I’m going,” and Haizaki answered in a barely understandable way from inside the bathroom, but he guessed it was a yes and hurried up in getting out.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

The traffic light turned red suddenly, and Kuroko barely managed to stop.

Forced on the sidewalk, surrounded by people, he stood on the road edge and on the tense rope of his own nerves, his face impassive and secretive of the storm in his brain. His head turned restlessly from one side to the other, looking for something, _anything_ , to tell him where Akashi was.

He felt his heart pulsing in his ears, too fast and too loud, and he knew he was panting, but his mind couldn’t stop. He pulled his phone out of a pocket to check once more the open chat, but the new texts were only another endless and pitiful list of ‘ _Nothing here_ ’ and ‘ _Not here either_ ’ that made his chest clench painfully.

It was stupid, and he knew it, too. What they were doing, the way they were moving, how they were acting, everything was completely… senseless.

The traffic light turned green, but Tetsuya didn’t cross the road. Instead, he harshened his grip on his mobile and forced himself to close his eyes for a second, slowing down both breathing and heart.

Akashi wouldn’t have acted like this. Akashi would have said they were fools if they really thought they could find a person who had vanished by walking in circles without a single clue in such a big city like Tokyo. Akashi would have acted differently and would have found a solution in less than a minute, alone, as if the whole rest of the world was pathetically too slow to keep up with him, let alone overcome him. Kuroko wasn’t Akashi, but he was the only one who knew him well enough to try to think like him.

First of all, he had to put together everything he knew about Seijuro and his ‘lover.’

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi was slipping down the street like a ghost, with his hood up and his head down, careful not to meet anybody’s gaze, not to risk someone talking to him. Shougo hated when he talked with people.

It took him little effort. Indeed, the cash point was not more than three minutes from the apartment, and luckily there was nobody else around, so Seijuro approached it and moved to slip his father’s card in.

He stopped because he saw his own reflection in the matte glass of the screen and the metal around it. It was deformed and unfocused, but it couldn’t hide the big purple bruise blooming on his left cheek, up to the temple and down the cheek, nor the red crusts of dried up blood at the corner of his mouth because of the rudimental gag Haizaki used to choke his screams just so little ago.

Akashi blinked, not as much for the image itself – he was used to it already – as for the realization hitting him.

Had he tried to… scream? To ask for help against his boyfriend? Why? They had already had sex more than once, even in occasions when he really wasn’t in the mood or hadn’t the strength, because he was tired or a bit too much in pain, but he had never said anything because he knew that was what Shougo wanted. Why hadn’t he make it this time? And even before, why had he said ‘No?’ He knew he was supposed to do his best to please his lover, so why had he tried something like that? Wasn’t he done with ruining everything? He really had to destroy even the last relationship he had, his last chance?!

But… But Midorima would… would have never lied to him, would he? And what if he was right? He had said a relationship was something different, that if one of the two refused, then the other should have stopped; he had said it was a… rule. Yet Shougo hadn’t respected it. 

A woman walked fast behind him and vanished behind the corner of the street, not even noticing him, but Seijuro didn’t pay it any mind.

No, it wasn’t just that. Shougo hadn’t respected _him_.

Akashi had only… asked, _please_ , not to do it. For once, only once. Because he was tired, because he was confused, because he had just gotten out of the hospital, and his ribs were still hurting him and…

His eyes lifted briefly to met the dull ones of his reflection.

He had always taken everything silently, thinking that it was his duty to Shougo as his boyfriend, and he knew he had made mistakes more than once, but… shouldn’t it have been an at least a reciprocal thing? Shouldn’t Haizaki have worried for him at least a bit?

Akashi turned his head to the side to take a better look at the bruise under his eye, but truthfully his mind was focused on those marks the reflection wasn’t showing, the ones on his arms and right side and lower part of his belly. The ones on his hips and the ones on his inner thighs.

Was it really right? Was it right that at least once a week he looked at his reflection in the mirror and found it _like this_? He had spent a whole month in the hospital, but neither Takao nor Midorima had ever come covered in bruises, even if they were an item! And Ryouta and Daiki… It was just his supposition, but he was almost sure they were still sleeping together, at least. 

Aomine could have easily left far too many marks on Kise, yet the image of the cop raising his hands on the other made him feel so bad so violently he had to detach from the machine running and bend over the closest trash bin, a step from there. He threw up his own soul, together with far more white liquid than he liked to know was in his stomach, and his hands clenched restlessly.

His mind couldn’t stop creating awful visions; Shintarou kicking Kazunari as this one curled up on the floor in vain, Daiki gagging Kise rudely to muffle his desperate cries for help, Momoi – tender little Momoi, the only girl in their group, the one every Miracle would have sold a kidney or even both for – sobbing and begging her lover to stop but going unheard. He had seen those pictures in his mind with himself and Haizaki as protagonists maybe a thousand times, a hundred he had lived them truly, but they had never looked so… _wrong_ … as they did instead if applied to his friends. He didn’t want them to go through that!

Trembling, a hand traveled up to his mouth, silencing the little sobs that were making him jerk continuously and trying to erase the traces of escaping tears that painted his cheeks.

He didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t know it anymore, he didn’t even know what he was feeling!

In his memory of barely fifteen minutes ago, Haizaki was substituted by Tetsuya, but the image didn’t last more than a couple of seconds before that picture of awful and humiliating violence imploded in itself, made innocuous by the simple presence of the phantom, by the simple fact that _he knew_ Kuroko would have never hurt him. It was an irrational certainty, yet even one that Akashi could graze. It was that and stop, but… then why wasn’t it the same with Haizaki?

And it wasn’t even a matter of love or boyfriends anymore. It wasn’t just a ‘couple’ business. There were a lot of other things Seijuro was realizing only now – or maybe he had realized already but pretended not to see – and that threw strange shades over the picture of the guy he had seen up until now.

Shougo had never treated him like Tetsuya did.

 

_“It’s good to see you again, Akashi-kun. How are you feeling today?”_

 

He had never protected him like Nijimura did.

 

_“I won't let you go back to who beat you like this, okay?”_

He had never worried for him like Aomine did.

 

_“This is a_ mistake _for you?! It is losing control?!”_

 

He had never been close to him as Kise was.

 

_“I don’t know how it is to live with someone, but I don’t think that’s how it should work.”_

 

He had never taken care of him like Midorima did.

 

_“None of us ever hurt the other, Akashi, because this is not how it works in a couple.”_

 

He had never been scared for him like Murasakibara was.

 

_“Neh, Aka-chin, don’t ever do it again. I got scared when Mido-chin called me.”_

 

And…

“STOP!”

Akashi straightened up, ignoring his own voice, and turned his back to the cash point, slipping the card back in his pocket and starting running for his life.

Terror pumping in his veins, he made a decision: he would vanish for a while. Not for long, just enough time he would need to understand, but to do it for real and on his own, not only listening to what others yelled at him. He would realize what he really wanted and which was the truth, and if he would realize Shougo was all he could wish for, he would come back and ask for forgiveness, begging to be taken back in.

Panting and scared, he didn’t dare to slow down.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Tetsuya was on his feet in the opening space of the posterior doors of a bus. Despite the many empty seats, he felt unable to sit still, and so he chose to stay there, nervously beating a foot on the floor and thinking.

Akashi had left the hospital by car, and instead he had needed time to start searching for the other, so running around in circles was useless. He would have gotten down at the first station near the subway, and then he would have studied all the routes to come up with a plan.

In the meanwhile, he kept on thinking of every single piece of knowledge he had about this new Akashi. It wasn’t much, honestly, because the man he had met at the hospital was a Seijuro he had never seen before. Or maybe he had? He thought back to the pitiful submissive state he had found him in.

Akashi had never been one to let himself be stepped on so easily. It wasn’t possible that one day the other someone had come and dragged him into such a relationship.

_He ‘disappeared’ right after his escape from home, and from then on, he hasn’t rented or bought any place to stay at, nor has he checked into any hotel_ , Tetsuya brooded, confused. And yet, in theory, Akashi had money with him. Momoi had – probably quite illegally – discovered the existence of a bank account under Seijuro’s mother name – and how could the bank not notice she was dead? Unless someone convinced them not to – but it has been emptied during the guy’s first year of disappearing, not to mention with cash movements that seemed too big and hazarded to be Seijuro’s. _He would have never made them knowing he had nothing else._ And back then, not even a month had passed between the escape and the first hospitalization.

Kuroko frowned, holding tighter to the sustaining pole.

Seijuro must have gone immediately to the person who had reduced him in this way, but that meant he must have already known him, probably even a long time to let the other beat him like that.

So maybe the relationship started… _before_ the escape? Before graduation?

_Let’s assume that’s it_ , Tetsuya chose, focused. _Sei must have run to this man as soon as he left home, with money he had left to someone else and a few other things, but he never started working, and the account emptied soon. He didn’t move after that, so probably he remained with that person._ It would explain his feeling of dependence: moneyless, unable to pay for himself, a guest in someone else’s house…

But if he was right, when did they meet? Akashi rarely socialized in middle school and almost never in high school, and if he did, it was always accompanied by either someone of the Generation of Miracles or, at best, by his teammates from Rakuzan.

Guessing this person must have been really close to him to earn enough trust to break him later, it would have been unavoidable for…

Kuroko widened his eyes, shocked by the realization that hit him.

_We know him!_

A weight got stuck in his throat. They knew him, they knew the bastard! It must be so! _At least one_ of them must have met him!

Tetsuya grabbed the pole even tighter in his fingers, almost without realizing, as his observation-trained mind ran through data and data with a terrifying speed, bringing out faces, trying to find one that… _clicked._

It must have been someone close to Akashi, enough to know the state of his mind and that in reality he was frailer than how he let out, or else he wouldn’t have even gotten closer, like all the others who didn’t know who the _real_ Seijuro was. Someone who could know how easy it could have been to manipulate him by playing with his guilt trip and someone he would have let come near enough for the other to start using him.

‘ _You’ve never liked him_ ’ and ‘ _As always!_ ’ Seijuro had said during his panic attack. Back then he hadn’t paid it that much mind, but now he realized that the words had a far more important meaning if his theory was right. Not only had they already met who had hurt Akashi, but they even talked to him, been with him and not only once, but more. They must have known him well enough to despise him somehow, to the point that the all of them always jumped on him.

_In the room there were only us from the Generation of Miracles, Nijimura-senpai and Takao-kun_ , he reasoned calmly, eyes fixed on the floor. Guessing that the last one was excluded because he wasn’t really part of the fight or included in Akashi’s outburst – and however they weren’t that close to be honest – there were only them and the captain left, Teiko’s group but without…

Tetsuya’s head jerked upward, eyes focused on nothing out of the window, and his hand reacted immediately, clicking the button to ask for the stop.

There was only one guy who hated Seijuro enough to wish to reduce him that way and was depraved enough to do it for real; someone that none of them had even bothered calling and whose father had a black subcompact car that he used to go to school when he was called for one of his son’s disasters.

He never knew when and how he had brought the phone to his ear or had gotten off the bus, but even if Aomine answered him almost immediately, he was already slipping through the few pedestrians on his path to the subway. And thanks to the gods, he wasn’t even too much far from his destination.

“ _Tetsu, did you f-…?!_ ”

“It’s Haizaki!” he yelled, uncaring of the glares he received, never stopping. “Akashi-kun’s abuser is Haizaki!”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi didn’t even bother closing the door behind him as he entered running in the apartment, and so he simply slammed it, uncaring of the lock. 

Shougo wouldn’t need more than fifteen or twenty minutes to come back from the minimarket, and Seijuro didn’t know how long before he had gotten out or how much time he had lost to choose what to do. He had to be fast.

He fell breathlessly on his knees before the wardrobe and pulled out his gym bag as if he was ripping it from a creeper plant. Then he started grabbing what few clothes he had and throwing them in without bothering with folding them. Shirts and trousers occupied more room like that, but he had so little things it wouldn’t have been a problem, and so he simply threw the undergarments in without care, in rapid and imprecise gestures. A pair of socks fell out, and he lost time picking them up because his hands were trembling, and he kept letting them fall. Then a pair of trousers got stuck in the zipper, and the ticking sound of the clock in his head made his blood rush to his head. He felt heat smothering him, and his breaths were fast and irregular, but he clenched his teeth and managed to angle the cloth out.

The sound of the zipper reaching the end of its track made him sigh in relief.

He jumped on his feet and pulled Haizaki’s sweatshirt off, but grabbed harshly his father’s credit card from the pocket. He felt just as guilty as a thief, but he knew he needed that money – he had to pay for a place to stay and everything that came with it and paying for himself when he couldn’t even work – so he gulped that unpleasant feeling down together with the tears of frustration he refused to shed. He threw the gym bag on a shoulder and turned to fly out of there before Shougo came back.

His flight ended in between the kitchenette and the lunch table with the sinister creaking of the entrance door handle lowering.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I'm Satan, I'm evil for leaving you like this, right? But, guys, it's fun to see you struggling, come on! I have an exam tomorrow, I deserve some fun before that v.v
> 
> Seriously, though. Go thank Eve because she worked a miracle on this story!


	13. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It ends.

**__Chapter_12__ **

 

Akashi stood motionless, mute and eyes fixed on the handhold moving like a guillotine on a guilty neck.

His heart was beating like crazy in his throat, and his breath was laboured and fast, _too fast_ , and it was like he wasn’t getting enough air because suddenly the whole rest of the room vanished. Only the click of the lock opening remained with the rectangular shape of the door opening and the half cursing and frame of Haizaki coming in.

Shougo lifted his eyes to him when he noticed his presence and looked startled as he got closer.

“You’re back already?” he seemed to wonder out loud. “How the hell did you d-” Then he saw the bag on Akashi’s shoulder.

Seijuro felt his heart suddenly falling to the middle of his chest with a heavy yet silent thud. He met the albino’s gaze when the other looked for his eyes, but couldn’t manage to find the strength to move a single muscle.

“What the fuck are you doing with that?!” Haizaki let the beers fall to the floor, and that was a bad, _very bad_ , sign. “What’s in there?!”

He didn’t even wait for an answer, but grabbed the shoulder-belt and pulled, and for as much as Seijuro tried to resist, Shougo was simply stronger and yanked the bag off of him. He opened it in a hurry, and at first he just pushed his arm in and ravaged inside, as if he didn't trust for only clothes to be there, while his lover stood frozen staring at him, but then he realized. When he lifted his eyes to Akashi, he threw the bag on the floor and kept in his hand only a random shirt. With the other, he grabbed Seijuro’s arm to prevent him from stepping back.

“What were you thinking of doing, eh?” he asked, his voice low and threatening as he waved the cloth before his eyes. “Did you want to run away with the money?” Akashi shook his head with a minimal choked sound, maybe the beginning of a sentence, but before he could try to answer, Shougo had already violently shoved the shirt on the floor and was raising his voice. “Don’t you fucking dare mess with me!”

Seijuro gulped, instinctively scared, but somehow he found his free hand wrapping lightly around the wrist of the one Haizaki was grabbing him with. It wasn’t a strong grip, but it was the closest thing to a rebellion he had ever attempted in the last three years.

“It’s not about the money, Shougo!” he said, shaking his head, but he didn’t want to lie. He felt like he couldn’t, thus he kept on. “It’s true that I want to leave for a while, but it’s just to…!”

His sentence was cut by the violence Haizaki grabbed his hair with. He pulled him backward and up so harshly by his hair that he forced Akashi to expose his throat completely and to balance on his tiptoes with a loud moan.

“See! It’s true!” the albino yelled. “You take the money and leave after all the time you’ve spent here doing nothing, huh?! You whore!”

Akashi exhaled violently when the insult came along with a knee straight to his stomach, and as soon as Haizaki loosened his grip, he found himself crouching on the ground beside the table legs next to the exit door, completely deprived of any strength and breath. He coughed desperately, and his arms moved instinctively to cover the hurting area, his face pressing against the floor.

Haizaki was moving frantically, restless, in continuous steps back and forth beside his body. He looked like a caged beast or someone whose world had just turned upside down before his eyes. Akashi wondered if it was the idea of losing him that was shocking him so much, but for once he forced himself to ignore it. It was him who needed to understand first; then maybe he’d even come back! It wasn’t a definitive separation; it didn’t have to be!

“S-Shougo…” he tried to call, getting lightly up from the floor, only with his back, but the other didn’t let him talk.

“Shut up, whore!” he yelled, accompanying the insult with a foot that fell violently on Seijuro’s head, slamming his forehead against the linoleum. “Whore, whore, whore!”

Every time he repeated that insult, making it echo in the other’s brain like an accusing raging mantra, Haizaki pressed his head with his foot, making him think the pressure would soon be enough to smash his skull.

After an eternity, the albino stepped back, panting, but only for a moment. He readied a kick that fell violently on Akashi’s side, ripping a desperate pained cry out of him that almost covered the umpteenth “Whore!” thrown at his crouching figure. His scream had barely died down into a sob when Shougo grabbed him with a hand by the clothes on his shoulder, and with the other, by the hair.

Seijuro felt himself being pulled to his feet and then thrown, and a second later the edge of the fires crushing his side raised the dreading sound of a shattering bone. He screamed again at the boiling pain of his newly broken ribs. The explosion in his mind stunned him, muffling every other possible perception, and so he slipped down the shelf to kneel on the ground, unable to focus on anything but the pulsing in the lower right side of his ribcage. Instinctively, he brought a hand to cover his hurting side.

Fingers closed around his hair just above his left ear, but the chaos in his mind was such that he couldn’t react in any way. Suddenly his skull was slammed again with force, this time against one of the cupboards he was leaning on. A wave of coloured stains filled his sight, blinding him, but allowed him to feel the grip getting stronger again, and then his head slammed once more, just like before.

Sounds started fading away from his ears, confused, and his throat hurt. Hell was in his left side, and _everything_ hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt so much, hurt…

He screamed again.

“Let go of him!”

Suddenly, Haizaki’s grip vanished.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Tetsuya didn’t wait for Aomine and his colleague to come. He couldn’t afford it, and so he ran, this time pushing people mercilessly and without an excuse. When finally he emerged from the subway station panting, he looked around only for a second, just what he needed to get a hang of where he was.

Everything was still like when he used to come here sometimes with Nijimura to get Haizaki and drag him to the matches, years before, and he mentally thanked the gods that a rapid check allowed Daiki to tell him that the other’s parents had moved for work and left this one in their old house. Even if he hadn’t been there more than a couple of times, Kuroko was good at memorizing streets and places – it was training for his observation skills – so he went straight down an alley and resumed running.

It wasn’t a dangerous district, but not even the safest, so he wasn’t surprised when he noticed there weren’t many people around. Nobody was checking the external stairs of the three-story building he was interested in, and he ran up the steps, almost stumbling every time, never slowing down.

_Third door_ , he thought, but he was still at the second one when he heard a scream, slightly muffled by the walls, sure, but clearly desperate. He felt the anger building up at the thought of how many people lived there and yet pretended not to see, _had pretended not to see for three years._

He didn’t even stop for a second, simply grabbing his shirt and without stopping his feet, he slammed his whole weight against the door. It opened meekly, and Kuroko managed to stop only two steps already in the apartment.

He widened his eyes, his mask completely forgotten.

Akashi was on his knees on the floor, his right side pressed against a shelf under the fires and a hand grabbing his side. Both his mouth and right temple were bleeding, a huge purple bruise was covering the left half of his face, and, _for all the gods,_ Haizaki was beside him, keeping him by his hair and was going to slam his head against the cupboard.

“Let go of him!” He didn’t think about anything, but threw himself on the guy and grabbed every single thing he found.

Haizaki lost his balance under the push and let go of Akashi to get some balance back, but when he turned and met those familiar and annoying blue eyes, he seemed to completely forget about his previous target.

“Kuroko!” he growled, furious.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

“Kuroko!”

_…Kuroko?…_

Akashi was confused, really, but when he heard that name, he couldn’t help but let it slip above the pain, to the center of his brain, to allow himself to look for what it meant.

Difficultly and after some vain attempts, he managed to lift his eyelids, and his eyes slowly brought him the image of Kuroko - _what is he doing there? -_ with his back against the corner of the hall toward the entrance, barely a couple of steps from him. Haizaki had grabbed his shoulders, but Tetsuya was wriggling, and suddenly his hand clenched in a fist and slammed against Shougo’s cheek, making him turn his head.

Akashi wailed, not knowing for whom.

“Really, Kuroko?” Haizaki smirked. “Is this all you’ve got?!”

When he turned his head straight again, there wasn’t even the slightest mark on his cheek. Akashi tried to murmur something, but his words ended up in a choked scream when the other returned the punch, and red drops flew to stain the walls.

Kuroko fell down, askew the table, and Shougo jumped on him, sitting on his stomach, and started throwing punches randomly, ceaselessly.

_No, no, no, please, Shougo! Shougo, he has nothing to do with this, stop!_ Akashi barely saw the back of his boyfriend, and he just wanted to stop everything, but he couldn’t talk, breathe, do anything. Only sob convulsively as two of the people he loved the most hurt each other. Instinctively, he covered his ears.

Kuroko managed to bring a hand to Haizaki’s face and start scratching, but the other cursed and simply stopped hitting to grab the phantom’s wrists and lock them together.

Akashi tried to hold onto something, _anything_ , and at first he managed to grab the third drawer, but it slipped out of its binaries and fell to the floor with a loud noise of shaken metal that made the guy jerk, but did nothing to the two fighters.

“So you’re the one who talked him into leaving, huh?” Shougo growled, but with a crazy smile on his lips, and he took both of the other’s wrists in a single hand and moved them above his head to forbid him from attacking.

Kuroko was helpless against so much strength. He wriggled and fought, clearly stubborn to not give up, but Akashi didn’t need the Emperor Eye to know how it would end. He had been in that same position enough times to know that the phantom had no chance. Shougo, after all, was a rabid dog.

“Maybe he only realized what a beast you are,” Tetsuya hissed to him furiously, and under Seijuro’s terrified gaze, he spat in Haizaki’s face.

Shougo growled a chain of curses, enraged. Then he punched the phantom right in the face, and Akashi jerked with a choked moan at the liquid yet creaking sound that accompanied Kuroko’s lamenting. That sound broke his trance a little, and Seijuro bent forward, on all fours, ignoring all the objects under his fingers.

“That whore is not worth the trouble,” Shougo laughed, grabbing once more Kuroko’s arm with his free hand and outstretching it. Always laughing, he started turning it. “But you’re always the same idiot, aren’t you?”

Kuroko’s answer was a muffled scream in his own throat, barely restrained by the lips that he had sealed with pure stubborn willpower to not give his torturer any satisfaction, when a sudden movement broke his wrist.

Akashi jerked once more at the sound, and his hands clenched in fists out of their own will, one grabbing air, and the other, one of the fallen objects. His eyes raised as he tried desperately to force his body to get him back up, and the unnatural form of Tetsuya’s wrist made something inside him shiver, as if a single beat of his heart had suddenly become strong enough to shake him wholly. He stumbled backward and grabbed onto the fires without even knowing how he had gotten on his feet.

Haizaki laughed and let go of the broken arm to lift his and hit Kuroko’s face again with a fist. 

Seijuro saw the phantom, suddenly from above Haizaki’s shoulders, and he saw the blood dripping from his nose and mouth, and it was weird and worse than any pain and red, so red, so much red, _lift your arm_ , so red, so very red, a lot of red, _the scissors are in the third drawer_ , too much red, red, red and suddenly the whole world was _Red._  

Then everything vanished.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

“Akashi-kun?! Akashi-kun! Akashi-kun, can you hear me?! Can you h-…”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_He comes back home after buying groceries, one of the few reasons he’s allowed to leave the apartment for, and it’s difficult to carry all the bags with the bruise pulsing on his shoulder, but his face stands impassive as he walks in the streets, meeting nobody._

_Since he’s moved in with Shougo, he has never left the block if not to go to the hospital when extremely necessary, and yet he doesn’t know a name of those who lives there. He can recognize some faces, but he has no idea of who they are. It gives him a strange feeling, as if he were a ghost who doesn’t really belong to that world, as if his mere existence was an awful mistake of the whole creation that, therefore, was pretending not to see him._

_When he walks up the stairs and down the corridor to his house, he sees their neighbor. She’s a quite attractive woman in her forties, with a cigarette between her lips, all caught up in cleaning her mat as if the hosts she welcomes there worry about those things. Akashi knows what she does - Shougo told him rudely - and anyway he can hear her with her clients when they come, but she always leaves when she’s done. She doesn’t live there, and thus they rarely meet._

_Noticing him, the woman stops, places her mat back in its place and slips the cigarette out of her lips, blowing smoke slowly as she watches him come closer._

_“Where did he get this one?” she asks lowly as soon as Akashi walks beside her, without obviously greeting her to avoid a misunderstanding with his boyfriend._

_This Ain’t Love_

“Hold i-! TETSU!”

“Oh my god, what the fuck happened here?!”

“Akashi-kun, can you hear me?! Please, listen to me! Listen to me, Akashi-kun!”

“Don’t stand there frozen, call an ambulance, hurry up! Tetsu?! Oi, Tetsu, what’s there?! Where’s Aka-…? Oh, God.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_Seijuro stops, even if he knows he shouldn’t, but only because the question is so weird he can’t help but frown toward the woman._

_She breathes into her cigarette again, looking at him with a strange light in her eyes as she lays backward against the doorframe._

_“The girl of this time,” she asks naturally, exhaling smoke that doesn’t make Akashi cough anymore. It used to, back in time, but then Haizaki forced him to learn. “More or less, I knew all the others. They were all from here, but this one is new.”_

_Akashi still doesn’t understand. He stands motionless, looking at the woman’s dark eyes ‘till when he finally recognizes the light in them, and then he frowns._

_Why should the prostitute living next-door pity him?_

_“I don’t understand,” he lets slip out of his lips, and suddenly, even if he strives not to show it, he panics._

_Why did he talk with that woman?! What if Shougo heard them?! If he thought he was cheating on him?! But he would never do something like that, really!_

_He would keep on with his monologue of terror if two words from the woman didn’t freeze his thoughts._

_“The bitch,” she says._

_This Ain’t Love_

“-ashi, do you hear me? We’re almost there, okay?! Hold on, do you hear me?! We’re almost there, so don’t you dare try anything funny here, got it?! I don’t want to get killed by Tetsu! I’m too young to die, and so are you, you get it? So hold on, okay? Akashi? Akashi, do you hear me?! Don’t even tr-…”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_“I don’t understand,” he repeats, but he does, very well._

_His grip on the bags tightens, and the woman blows out smoke, but straightens and lets the cigarette fall on the mat before stepping on it._

_“Listen here, boy. It’s not my business if and why you’re letting that man beat you to a pulp, okay?” she says, staring him dead in the eyes from the height of her heels. “But if you really think this is worth it, then you should take a better look.”_

_Akashi watches her turning and going back in the house, closing the door behind, and all he can think is that it has been useless for her to clean the mat. Now it’s dirty again._

_Silent, he passes her door and reaches for his._

_This Ain’t Love_

“Where is he?!”

“Here! Fuck, look at his head!”

“Bring him in, immediately, nanodayo! What about Kuroko?!”

“He’s in the car. There wasn’t enough room for both of them, but they should be here soon.”

“Get ready to take in the other patient! I’m going first with this one, nanodayo!”

“Midorima!”

“Aomine, stay there! I’ll take care of this! Akashi, can you…”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_The smell hits him first, and he understands, knows, that the woman was right, but refuses to believe it anyway. For a moment more, he tells himself that the heavy scent, feminine and floral, impregnating the air is only from the soap left in the open empty tank in their trash bin. And Shougo is putting his boxers on only because he must have just showered. And the bed is undone because he had probably decided to sleep a bit more on his only day off._

_Akashi lays the bags on the table and starts pulling out the things in them, methodically placing everything in its place. He slips the frozen foods in the freezer and turns, and Shougo is there and blocks him with his back against the appliance._

_“What? No welcome back kiss?” he asks with a smirk, and his breath is already a clear waning sign that still goes unheard._

_Seijuro tilts his head backward and opens his lips, lets himself be explored even if the strawberry taste he finds in his lover’s mouth disgusts him deeply, far more than the already known bitterness of alcohol that still is there and strong. Haizaki pulls back after a moment, frowning. “What’s gotten into you?”_

_Seijuro shrugs, slipping away from him and returning to the groceries. He feels empty and unsure, disappointed for not being enough for the other, and he puts away a couple of other things before Haizaki grabs him from behind by his arms and stops him in the middle of the room._

_“I asked you a question, Seijuro.”_

_The tone of that ‘Seijuro’ is not a good signal, even if indeed Haizaki never called him ‘Sei-chan’ as he promised five years before._

_“Who was she?” Akashi finally asks, even if a good part of him wouldn’t want to because he knows it’s crazy in such a moment. It’s just that he can’t help it._

_“She who?”_

_Akashi gulps down the ‘Nobody’ trying to get to his tongue._

_“The woman who was here.”_

_There’s a moment of silence, one of those that breaks every hope in Akashi definitely, but then Haizaki makes him turn slowly._

_“She was a colleague who needed some documents,” he says, and he’s so serious, in his face as in his voice, that Seijuro can only believe him and sigh in relief. “But how do you know she was here?”_

_And relief vanishes, and fear comes._

_This Ain’t Love_

“-X-rays to head and ribcage! Now! Akashi, can you hear me, nanodayo? Akashi, I need to know if you’re consci-…”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_He could say from the smell, the boxers, the bed. He could say from the taste of strawberry under the cover of alcohol in his mouth, but it would be lying. He wouldn’t have paid mind to any of that, he wouldn’t have given it the meaning he had, if not…_

_“I-I,” he gulped, “talked with the neighbour.”_

_There’s no need for him to say anything more. The light in Haizaki’s eyes betrays his hand even before its back slams against Seijuro’s face, but the other simply waits for it, knowing he deserves the hit for doubting the other._

_What happens after is confused. There’s a lot of pain and a lot of hits, the room spinning around him as he’s slammed right and left like a lifeless doll. Shougo stops, drinks more to drown the rage for his baseless accusation, and then he decides it wasn’t enough and starts hitting again. At a certain point, Akashi knows his boyfriend is not able to realize where the limit is anymore, and even if with difficulties, he manages to run to the bathroom and to lock himself in as his lover turns to throw away an empty can of beer._

_His name is yelled a lot of times before the lock breaks and the door is opened by brute force. Then there’s once more only pain and finally the darkness._

 

_This Ain’t Love_

“-o, no, no!” 

“Kise, calm down!”

“No, it’s my fault! If I hadn’t joined the team, Akashicchi wouldn’t have ever confronted Haizaki! It’s…”

“ _Ryouta_ , for fuck’s sake, do you even realize the bullshit you’re saying?! You’re only looking for an excuse to take the blame! You know well it’s not that simple!”

“… No, no… N-no…”

“Ryouta…!”

“Aomine, leave him be, now.”

“But Nijimura…!”

“I said, leave him be. We’re all angry with ourselves now. Let him calm down on his own.”

“Oh my god, Shin-chan! Shin-chan, come here!”

“What, nanodayo?!”

“Tacchan is right! It seems like he’s…?”

“What?! It seems to be what, Satsuki?!”

“Awak-?”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

_When he opens his eyes again, he sees Aomine’s face._

_This Ain’t Love_

When he opens his eyes again, he sees Aomine’s face and those of another half dozen people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I WAS WAITING FOR THIS, OH, THANK YOU!
> 
> I'm done with Haizaki, I hate him -.- I need to say this, though: check _carefully_ the tags for this story. Just that, okay? If you don't notice anything, we'll get around that soon in one of the other stories v.v
> 
> Now, now, now... What will happen from here~?
> 
> See you,
> 
> Agap


	14. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akashi wakes up. Nothing is the same.

**__Chapter_13__ **

 

Akashi heard his own breath low and dragged and long, echoing weirdly in his ears, and he needed a moment to notice the plastic oxygen tent on his face, protecting his nose and mouth. It was attached to a large wrinkled tube and was heavier and better fixed than the ones he ever remembered wearing. He closed and lifted his eyelids slowly, with the same lethargy of some winter nights, and his irises seemed to burn when the sunlight entering the window touched them. When he opened his eyes again, he thought he was observing the world from behind the bars of his own cilia, but still he managed to recognize the faces scrutinizing him with worry. He tried to talk, but all that exited his lips when he tried to turn his head right, to Shintarou, was a raw mewl, pained like the muscles in his neck.

“Careful, nanodayo.” Midorima’s hands slowly laid on the sides of his face, bringing it back to its den of soft pillows. “Try not to move your head too much.”

Akashi closed and opened his eyes again, but it was too slow of a movement to be called ‘blinking.’ He felt his thoughts moving even slower than his muscles, and he grunted again, annoyed and exhausted, tired.

There were a lot of IVs in his skin, even on _both_ his arms, and he could feel something tightened around his head, but it somehow didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt that much, to be honest, and it was strange. With some time, he came to a conclusion.

“… anesthetics…” he muttered in a low voice, so much that Aomine, who was practically hunched over him to listen better, barely understood. And he chuckled.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we had many options, considering how you were,” he answered pulling a bit back, and Akashi stared at him from the corner of his eye as he stretched a hand to gently pat his wrist. “Welcome back to us, uh?”

Seijuro felt a strange noise escaping his nose, and his lips bent upward out of their own will. It was strange to feel his face so…dizzy.

“Do you need anything?” Akashi slowly moved his eyes, and he was grateful to Takao when the other waited for him to manage the gesture before concluding, pointing at Himuro beside him, “We can go fetch it for you.”

Seijuro thought, for a very long time, but then he concluded he didn’t need anything and shook his head.

Awful idea.

For as much as the gesture had been slow and minimal, a shock of pain passed through the curtain of medicaments that were losing their effect, and he moaned confusedly as his face became distorted.

“I said careful, nanodayo!” Midorima muttered, but still in a low voice which Akashi was grateful for.

He took his time, breathing, and looked around for a little while. They were all there, from left to right: Midorima with Takao and Himuro with Murasakibara; Momoi at the end of his bed, gripping it almost violently and with a little worried expression on her tightened lips; Nijimura beside the corner of the mattress with a hand in his pocket and the other on the shoulder of one Kise Ryouta who was nervously observing the scene from his position, glued to Aomine’s arm.

Akashi remembered only confused pieces of what had happened after the fight with Shougo – Because there had been a fight, right? He thought he remembered something, but maybe those were parts of other memories. He wasn’t sure – not to mention the voices calling for him in the darkness, but he definitely had a clear memory of a desperate sob from Ryouta. He stared at the other, trying to remember which words meant what and how to push them out of his lips. He barely managed to whisper his friend’s name, but still Aomine moved aside to let his boyfriend pass, and the model, even if a bit uncertain, bent forward.

Akashi found himself again smiling a bit for that childish scared expression.

“I-t…” he gulped, trying to make his voice a bit clearer than a low murmur, “It wa-sn’t y-our fault…alri-ght?” The words came out easily with the passing of seconds, and Akashi even managed to bend his elbow a bit, just enough to lift his hand and allow Ryouta to hold onto it. “Don’t cry…” he admonished, seeing the blond face turning red and those golden eyes suddenly tearing up. “… Aomine will end up… calling you a crybaby… again…”

Unwillingly, Kise chuckled a bit at that whispered sentence and nodded, brushing his face with his free arm before holding tightly with both of his the hand Akashi had offered him.

Seijuro smiled a bit before falling asleep again.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Akashi reopened his eyes barely three hours later, but his room had less guests now. There were only Nijimura, Aomine, Midorima, and Kise. He wondered where Momoi and Murasakibara were, imagining that Himuro and Takao instead had preferred to leave him to his old teammates’ cares.

Ryouta was sitting on a chair, still holding his hand as he stared at the other three mumbling in a corner of the room. Seijuro was sure he wouldn’t have been able to catch their attention, so he strived and tightened a bit his grip on the model’s fingers. The man obviously jerked and turned to him suddenly.

“Hey, Akashicchi,” he greeted lowly, getting a bit closer. They all talked to him in low voices, but Akashi was grateful, for now he felt a dull throbbing in his skull, and he was sure that even just a slightly louder volume would have made his head explode. “How are you? Does it hurt anywhere?”

He thought for a second, and in the meanwhile the three conspirators got closer, drawn by Kise’s voice.

“Head…” he finally decided. Then he frowned a bit yet tried to keep as still as possible. “… and the right… side.”

“It’s normal, nanodayo,” Midorima assured, moving to the other side of the bed to check on the monitors and IVs. “You have a bad head trauma, and one of the ribs on your left side broke again. The effect of the anesthetics we gave you should run out completely in an hour, but if you feel like the pain is getting unbearable, we’ll give you other painkillers. Do you feel anything else?”

Seijuro thought a bit more, and for a second he thought about keeping quiet, ashamed, but in the end - maybe because of the dizziness from the medicines or maybe because those four guys had already been there for him for a month, he didn’t know - he admitted the last area that he felt pulsing painfully.

Midorima fixed the glasses on his nose but didn’t blush, and Aomine’s and Nijimura’s expressions were far too dark, definitely not mocking. Kise was still striving to smile, but it was clear that there was something off even with him.

“There was an internal hemorrhage near the colon, so they had to perform a surgery to drain the blood out, nanodayo. That, too, will ask for a while to heal.”

Seijuro muttered something, his head spinning a bit.

“Oi, Akashi,” Nijimura called him slowly from behind Midorima. “Do you remember something about what had happened and how you got here?”

“Senpai…” Kise tried, but Aomine stopped him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“The sooner we clear this thing, the better it is, Ryouta,” he said darkly, and Seijuro wondered what they meant.

Then he remembered.

His eyes widened as everything around him went back and assaulted him, pinning him to the bed far more than the IVs or the broken bones, and his brain got stuck, unable to go over the image of Haizaki and Kuroko fighting. Instinctively, he looked for Midorima, and he didn’t care about the pain in his skull while moving his head toward him.

“How is h…?” He stopped before finishing the question.

He _who_? He did want to know about both, that was sure, but who should he ask about first? Haizaki was his boyfriend, even if he had chosen to take some distance for a while, so he should have been the most obvious choice, his first thought! But Kuroko had gotten into something that he wasn’t involved in only for him, _he had been beaten for him_. What should he do?!

Shintarou observed the conflict in Akashi’s eyes, guessing it, and exchanged a glance with Aomine, but even the cop looked unsure. Neither of them had the slightest idea of how their friend would react to the news they were going to break to him.

“Akashicchi, Kurokocchi is in another room.” They both jerked when Kise took the lead, but Akashi immediately moved his gaze to him and seemed to relax when the other smiled a bit. “He’s fine. He has a cast on his left arm and a big plaster on his nose, that’s true, but he’s scaring the hell out of the doctors already, so I take it as he’s fine.” His smile dropped a bit. “Surely he’s in a better shape than you.”

Akashi took a little relieved sigh, ignoring his rib’s protests, too happy that Shougo hadn’t exag-…

He blinked, this time quite rapidly, and when he met Ryouta’s irises, he wondered how he could let himself be deceived so easily.

“And…” He gulped, unsure of saying his boyfriend’s name or not, but in the end he imagined that Aomine already knew, or that Kuroko would have told him sooner or later, so he gave up. “And Shougo?”

He was expecting everything, honestly. Screams, yells, curses for choosing him, another fight like the one that brought him to run from the hospital the first time, everything. But not the unsure glance that flew through the four men.

Weren’t they angry with Haizaki after he not only sent him back to the hospital, but hurt Kuroko, too? He couldn’t explain the feeling of disappointment that took his stomach for a while.

“Akashi.” It was Njimura again who called his attention, but with even more seriousness than before. “It’s really important. What do you remember about what happened?”

Seijuro didn’t understand. Why didn’t they want to tell him about Shougo? Were they trying to keep them apart? Well, it was understandable, but… he needed to know how he was!

“I… don’t…” He gulped, hesitant, but tried to focus under Shuuzou’s eyes that were promising no answer before he had given one himself. What happened exactly? _I ran home instead of taking the money._ “I was collecting my things,” he remembered, closing his eyes to better visualize, “but Shougo had come home earlier and realized I wanted to leave. I tried to tell him it would have been temporary and that I simply wanted to think, but he didn’t listen to me.” He could hear the monitor beside him speeding up its sounds at the rhythm of his heartbeat, but he gulped and went on. “He got angry.” Did it still make sense to lie? Kuroko had seen everything, and he wouldn’t keep it from the others. “He hit me. He slammed my head against the cabinet, and when I opened my eyes again, Kuroko was there.”

He paused. His hands were trembling slightly, and he gripped the sheets to hide it. A warm hand laid on his right fist.

“Then Kurokocchi and Haizakicchi started fighting,” an accommodating voice concluded - Kise’s? - and Akashi frowned.

“Shougo was stronger and slammed Kuroko down.” He gulped. “He broke his arm and resumed punching him.”

And then? He had told him all those things, that someone like Seijuro wasn’t worth it, that… _He told him I’m a… a…_ He clenched his teeth.

“What happened after that, Akashi? Try to remember everything you can. It really is important.”

Seijuro opened his eyes and looked for Aomine’s face with a pleading and confused look on his, but the man kept on staring at him, pushing, and he tightened a fist in the sheets. The other one, he moved it to hold Ryouta’s again.

“I… I toppled a drawer as I tried to get up…” _The third_ , he was almost sure. “There were… things… on the floor, and I crawled on some of them without noticing. Haizaki was still beating Kuroko, and I thought… he would have killed him…” His voice cracked on the last word, betraying the terror he had felt in that moment. “I got up to stop him, and somehow I had a pair of scissors in my hand and…”

 

_Red._

 

Akashi widened his eyes, terrified by the picture his eyes brought him. _No… No, no, no, no… NO!_ The red, red everywhere, red on his hands and on the scissors and on Haizaki, for the gods, all that red!

His breath turned uneven, but Shintarou’s bandaged hand was fast on his face, keeping it still to force him to look at his.

“Akashi, it’s all right, calm down, nanodayo,” he ordered, but he didn’t understand, he couldn’t understand, because he didn’t know, he didn’t know what Seijuro just did! God, how could he?! What he did was… was…! He did…

“Enough!” He jerked, lifting his eyes to the figure that was just pushing Midorima aside to stand before him and look him straight in the eyes. “Akashi, it was an accident, okay?” Nijimura’s grey eyes shone, dark yet determined, and Seijuro kept on panting but couldn’t move his gaze. “You didn’t want to, but you had no other choice.” Shuuzou talked with the conviction of someone who knew he had the truth with him. “He would have killed both you and Kuroko if you hadn’t stopped him.”

Seijuro couldn’t believe him anyway.

“H-How is he?” he whispered, tears in his eyes. Red on the floor and on his hands, so much red it could paint the whole sky; Haizaki’s _white_ shirt red, but his eyes grey as they stood opened to the void. “I…”

Nijimura and Aomine exchanged a glance. Midorima fixed the glasses on his nose. Kise lowered his eyes to the floor.

“Akashi,” Daiki called him all of a sudden, his voice low and face serious, looking at him like he was a feral beast pushed in a corner. “Haizaki is gone.”

Seijuro blinked, not understanding.

“The blades pierced his heart’s left atrium, nanodayo,” Midorima added carefully, observing him. “When Aomine and his colleague got there, it was already too late for him. We barely make it in time for you.”

It hit him like a truck, all of a sudden, with the realization drowning slowly into his consciousness.

“N-no…” Haizaki had died. “… no…” He was gone, Akashi was alone now, he had nobody to go back to, and Shougo was _gone_. “… no.” He was gone, he… he wouldn’t wait for him behind the door to beat him and drag him to the bed; he wouldn’t call him all those degrading names nor would he close his hands in the fridge door because he forgot an occurrence; he wouldn’t get drunk before forcing himself on him and wouldn’t betray him, making Seijuro feel like the most insignificant creature of the whole world; he wouldn’t… “I-It’s not true…”

Seijuro knew he had no right to, but suddenly in the storm of fear in his mind, a voice reached his ears, clear as never before, and he listened to it once more.

_It’s all right to feel like this, Big Brother._ It called him slowly, with a tenderness that was a hug itself. _He won’t come back to hurt you, and you’re entitled to feel relieved. It’s all right, Big Brother. All right. You did the only thing you could, you had no other choice. You saved Tetsuya that way. It’s all right. You can stop hurting now._

Then Akashi closed his eyes and sobbed silently, half in horror and half in relief.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

It wasn’t possible to forget killing someone, no matter how much of a violent and sadistic bastard they were. Kuroko understood it, so he waited patiently outside of Akashi’s room for him to calm down and for the others to get out before entering. 

He met Midorima’s gaze as he was adjusting a new IV. Then he greeted him, bowing his head as the doctor left.

Seijuro noticed him only then, because of his head kept still and straight by a little head clamp, but when he did, he stared at him silently. Tetsuya strived to smile as he laid his free hand carefully on his. The gesture came out better when the other returned the grip despite a little tremor.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, red eyes fixed on the other’s arm, hanging from his neck.

“It itches,” Kuroko simply answered, shrugging a bit, but then he observed the bandage around the other’s almost completely shaved head, the bruises, the IVs, everything, and he felt suffocated even if his face stood impassive. “You?”

Akashi blinked, looking at the ceiling, but didn’t answer.

“Can you lift the bed a bit?” he asked instead.

Tetsuya nodded silently, with the big plaster keeping his nose together, and slowly pressed the buttons beside the mattress until Seijuro was finally brought to an almost sitting position. Then he, too, sat on a side of the bed, so that the other didn’t have to move his head to see him.

They stayed like that for a while, silent as the passing time reddened sky and light and everything as if, empathetic, trying to help Akashi to blend into the background, to run from everything and everyone, swallowed by reality itself. Kuroko with his cold shades, instead, slowly began standing out in that same scenery, as if for once he was the one refusing to conform.

Seijuro observed him for a long time before daring, “What do you want to know?”

Kuroko stared at him in silence for whole minutes. In the end, he chose carefully his first question.

“Since when?”

Akashi moved his irises to the ceiling without seeing it really. Haizaki was gone and with him was gone everything he had tried to protect with his silence. All that was left was an empty nest made of lies placed one on top of the other. The only thought was unbelievably sad.

“Shougo…” There was a flash in Kuroko’s eyes when he said the first name of his assaulter, but Seijuro noticed it almost by mistake and couldn’t understand which emotion it was. Surely not a positive one. “He… came for me in the locker rooms after our first High School Winter Cup.” He gulped. Somehow, even while knowing that Tetsuya was already aware of the kind of abuses Haizaki had used on him, he couldn’t tell it out straight. He disguised it. “Back then he didn’t… didn’t hit me, but I didn’t get home before the following morning.”

“Akashi-kun.” Tetsuya’s eyes were big, but cold. “That was five years ago.”

“It isn’t…” Seijuro gulped. How could he explain?! “It _wasn’t_ like this, at first. After that time, I avoided Haizaki as much as possible, but when our teams got to the semifinals the following year, I…” Why couldn’t he talk properly?! Why did he keep on crying?! Shougo was gone. Was that why he felt so empty? “I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t… breathe… at the mere thought of having him in front of me on the court. I started feeling ill at the hotel, having palpitations, high blood pressure. It seemed like my temperature was rising. Coach sent me to the hospital with the club advisor, and I didn’t play the match.” He closed his eyes, tired. “Shougo fouled Mibuchi heavily, and without him the team started crumbling definitely. Nebuya and Kotarou lost their focus because of their rage, the other two players couldn’t stand the pressure, and we ended up losing. I got to the court just in time to watch the last few minutes.”

“Akashi-kun…”

“I don’t know how many times I apologized to Mibuchi that day, Kuroko. He looked at me as if I had gone crazy, continuously telling me it wasn’t my fault, but… it was. I knew it. I had panicked, but if I had only played like I was supposed to, the match…”

“Akashi-kun, it was just a match,” Kuroko interrupted, this time more firmly. “Mibuchi recovered shortly after. You know that.”

Seijuro closed his eyes.

“It was their last chance before graduating,” he whispered. “I couldn’t accept being the one who took it from them, exactly like the year before, and so… I… I thought that if I had gone to Shougo, if I had met him as I avoided doing in the match… I don’t know… I thought it would have been like… a sort of amend.”

Kuroko lowered his eyes on the way Akashi was clenching his free hand in a fist on the sheets, and almost instinctively he held tighter onto the other. Their fingers intertwined better, and their skins had a similar temperature, warm tending to cold, as always.

“Did he hurt you again?”

“No.” Seijuro closed his eyes, and Tetsuya simply watched him crying. “I wished for it. It was as if a voice in my head was screaming that I deserved it, I _needed_ it, and instead… We went to a motel, but he was as delicate as possible. When we got out, I felt filthier than the first time. I have never had the courage to look Mibuchi in the eyes again after sleeping with the player who crushed his dream.”

“Haizaki knew you would have felt like this, Akashi-kun.” Kuroko wasn’t sure answering so openly and mercilessly was the best way to help Seijuro, but the other had already suffered enough because of the deranged ‘truths’ Shougo filled him with, and he couldn’t let them keep on influencing him. “He did it to draw a line between you and those who could have helped you, not because he cared for you.”

Akashi moved his gaze to the window and then over the glass, but he didn’t retort and Tetsuya considered it a little victory.

They didn’t say anything more, simply stayed there holding hands, and when Seijuro fell asleep, Kuroko simply lowered his bed again, moved to the chair and followed him in the land of dreams.

Midorima’s angry yells the following morning managed somehow to make Akashi smile weakly.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

“Bring them out of here, now!”

“Mido-chin is evil.”

“Atsushi, I told you to ask for permission before bringing food in the hospital.”

“But it’s not for me, Muro-chin.”

Akashi’s eyelids trembled for a moment before lifting, and when they did it, he stood for a moment contemplating the scene of Midorima and Murasakibara quarreling in low voices at the end of his bed. It was weirdly familiar as a picture, with the only exception of Himuro trying to calm them down and the little plastic bag they both were pulling at. A sigh to his right made him turn his eyes, and an exasperated Aomine made him smile for some reason.

Daiki noticed him.

“Oi!” he exclaimed, half bored. “Do you plan on going back to dreamland soon, or can I get out and call Satsuki and Ryouta to ask them when they’ll be here? I may be dead tired, but I don’t trust leaving those two alone with you playing sleeping beauty.”

Seijuro smiled a bit, ignoring the mockery, and that was his only answer before he went back to look at the two contestants.

“What’s happening?” he asked, and Aomine shrugged.

“Murasakibara brought you cupcakes,” he explained. “Midorima has decided those things aren’t suited for a poor soul in its healing process. The Kind Giant didn’t take it very well.”

“I see.” But it was funny to watch.

Akashi observed them for a moment more before gesturing to Aomine to get out. As the cop, back in his uniform, left the room, he took a moment to think.

A month had passed since he had woken up at the hospital for the second time, two since he had found the Generation of Miracles with bared fangs ready to fight for him, and now was finally the day of his discharging – a real one, with the doctor’s approval and all – and in a sense he felt in duty to make a confront.

He could say it was better now.

Not good, not yet. The nightmares wouldn’t leave, the guilty feeling for Shougo’s death would never vanish, he was sure, and he still had difficulties in acting _normally_ around people that weren’t part of his little circle of friends. It would take time, everybody had told him that, and he had trusted them and nodded, always holding tight on Kuroko’s hand.

Kuroko who in that moment, Akashi knew with a mixture of anxiety and worry, was in the house he and Haizaki had shared during those years. The guy’s parents had refused to step in as much as they had refused to see Seijuro, and the cops had kept it locked ‘till the end of the investigations that had lasted a bit more than expected to prove with absolute certainty his innocence without the need to get to the tribunal. Tetsuya was with Nijimura, collecting those few things he had there and bringing them to another apartment near Tokyo University.

_Shuuzou’s house._ Akashi kept on feeling strange at the thought of living with his senpai. Sometimes he felt ashamed, as if he was cheating on Haizaki moving directly on to another guy barely a month after his death – then he remembered he had killed him, which was _probably_ far a worse kind of betrayal. Sometimes he was just scared, scared with a crazy and unjustified terror that he couldn’t name. He didn't know what he was scared of, but he could feel it.

He strived to pretend it wasn’t like that, but Tetsuya always read through the lines, and that morning had simply held his hand, promising that everything would be all right. Seijuro hadn’t had the strength to doubt him.

Chasing his confused thoughts away, he focused back on reality around him and on the faces, the voices, and the promises, the feeling of warmth that for bad or for good was spreading in his chest.

“Akashi-kun.” Seijuro widened his eyes and turned, surprised, but his shoulder relaxed instinctively when he saw the apathetic yet reassuring face of Kuroko showing up at his room door. “Shall we go?”

And there came the anxiety.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Momoi helped him get up and put his shoes on, because he still had difficulties in bending, and Aida brought him the new jacket she had taken the duty to buy when it had been realized he didn’t have one – because he didn’t need it before; because he wasn’t supposed to go outside anyway –.

Midorima signed the papers, glaring at him in an accusing way, but Takao winked at him as if to say not to care about that rude doctor.

Murasakibara helped him get in the car quietly, with a maiubo in his mouth and Himuro’s exasperated gaze on his back.

Aomine stared at him from the sidewalk, with his uniform proudly on and greeting him by touching his hat, grinning satisfied as Kise, with one of his boyfriend’s arms around his waist, waved a hand at him with so much strength, he could have dislodged his shoulder.

Akashi stared at them from behind the window even as the car started moving and left, but in the end he turned forward.

Kuroko was watching him from the passenger seat while Nijimura drove, and he stretched an arm to offer him a little bottle of water, one that he accepted gladly in a vain attempt to melt whatever was growing in his throat.

“You know you won’t get rid of them that easily,” Shuuzou muttered roughly. “I already had to put the limit ‘Kuroko only’ to avoid the royal escort; I will probably have to put a barricade around my house not to find them in my kitchen every damn morning.”

“It may not suffice, senpai. Kise-kun may look up on the internet some parkour video and get in all the same.”

Akashi almost spat the water in his mouth at that comment, but he managed to hold back and gulp before bursting out laughing, and Tetsuya observed him with a vague smile on his lips, happy to see him more relaxed.

It was a good step forward.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

They got to Shuuzou’s house in little time, and in just as much they occupied the wardrobe in the guest room with the bag of Akashi’s – few – things. It wasn’t big, but Nijimura took the floor because of that extra room, for when his siblings came to visit, so it was clean and tidy, with a desk and some furniture and a soft futon in the middle. Seijuro had trouble realizing all that room was for a single person after living three years in Shougo’s flat.

For a while he moved in the room, with big and uncertain steps, as if measuring it, trying to imagine himself in it, maybe laying on the futon or pulling something out of the wardrobe or sitting at the desk studying… _What?_

Akashi stopped. He stood motionless, looking around, and suddenly he realized he had no idea what to do. Before him was an endless white void, and he didn’t know if he should have walked in it or if the only attempt would have had him drowning in a bottomless hole.

In a grey long-sleeved sweater, one that was a bit big but kept him warm, and worn out jeans with thick white socks, he left the room to reach for the little kitchen, and his arrival interrupted Nijimura and Kuroko’s low talking in front of a calendar with all of his hospital check ups and meetings with group therapy – that both Aida and Midorima advised him to try – dutifully marked down. The two of them lifted their eyes to him, curious, but Seijuro didn’t manage to move from the doorframe he had grabbed who knew when, and he gave back to them an expression of pure and absolute panic.

“What do I do now?” he whispered lowly because it had never happened to him. For his whole life he had had a goal to achieve or someone to tell him what to do, be it his father or the school or the coach and then Shougo, but now there was nobody left, and he felt like a kid still learning how to walk who had been suddenly left going down a steep slope. As for now, he could only hurt himself.

A minuscule and tender touch on the palm of the hand he had left hanging beside him made him focus again on the gentle yet bitter look Tetsuya was giving him.

“Now, you start again from the beginning, Akashi-kun,” he murmured. “But trying to be okay.”

Seijuro gulped, accepting that minimal contact, trying not to shiver, and in the end he managed to force himself to nod.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Two weeks later, Akashi crumbled down again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two chapters left, after all ^-^


	15. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glueing the pieces back together.

**__Chapter_14__ **

 

It happened in such a stupid way that it took Nijimura a moment to realize. The signs had been there already, sure, but he had pushed, hoping that time would have done its part in healing Akashi. Instead, all of a sudden, everything had shattered again, bringing them back to the very starting point.

Difference was, this time Shuuzou found himself playing the villain role.

Nothing irreparable had happened. He had come back home, asked Akashi how the medical checkup was, what he had done during the day. At first, they had considered signing Seijuro up for University, but he still had too many difficulties with crowds, was too scared of talking with strangers, and in the end it had been decided to wait and give him time to recover. He had answered that he had read, and so they talked a bit about the book. Then Shuuzou had moved to take a shower, and Akashi offered to prepare dinner. It was a spontaneous and willing gesture, and Nijimura welcomed it as a good sign.

Then, when he was in the bathroom, he had heard some sudden noises, like something breaking, and in the end, screams.

He had run back immediately, putting his new T-shirt back on, but only to find Seijuro curled up on the floor in the middle of a sea of ceramic shards of some dish or cup, all pressed against the kitchen cupboard, almost hidden by the table, with arms covering his face and an endless string of “I’m sorry!” leaving his lips desperately.

“Akashi!”

Shuuzou tried to reach for him, but the screams grew louder. The guy curled up even more, and his “I’m sorry!” turned into a pleading “I didn’t meant, I didn’t meant to, I’ll be more careful, I didn’t meant to!” and it made the older one feel like a huge piece of trash, even if he hadn’t done anything. If only Shougo were still in hands reach, Nijimura felt like he himself could have killed him, in that very second, without thinking twice and with the resolution of one who knew would never have felt the littlest thread of remorse.

“Akashi,” he tried again, more kindly, keeping his voice low. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

He started repeating like a mantra, even him, his “I won’t hurt you” as he got near and knelt on the ground, as he gently took the younger’s wrists and moved them from his face to bring a hand to his nape and the other to his shoulders and finally to pull him to his chest. He kept on repeating that low promise for the whole time Akashi screamed and cried against him, ‘till when his voice finally broke and the trembling diminished ‘till vanishing.

When finally Seijuro was calm and lucid once again, they were both panting.

The kept silent for long, maybe too long, but in the end Shuuzou sighed and gave in to the reality he had tried so hard to deny.

“Akashi,” he called slowly, caressing his head. “As soon as you feel better, calmer... we’ll eat, and then I’ll help you collect your things.”

“No!” Seijuro detached from him immediately, and the completely terrified expression on his face crushed Nijimura deeply, but the other didn’t give up.

“Listen to me!” He managed to place his hands on the sides of Akashi’s face and to keep him still to force him to meet his gaze. Then he sighed again. “I’m not doing it because I’m angry with you, okay? It’s _absolutely_ not the reason, so just forget it already.” Seijuro was breathing fast, and Shuuzou felt bad because he knew why. “Nothing changed, did it?” he asked, bitter. “In your mind, everything is still the same. You’re living in a house, doing nothing, never getting out, alone with a thug who could easily beat you to a pulp any moment just because he wants to.”

How many times had Akashi seen him raising his hands, resorting to violence? And the usual victim of his anger was always Haizaki. In Seijuro’s mind, he must be a step more dangerous than Shougo himself, and the gods knew how much the other could hurt.

Akashi could feel the tears running down his face, deaf to his pleadings to stop, and he kept on shaking his head, murmuring low and trembling “No.” He knew, _he really knew_ , that Shuuzou wasn’t Shougo, that he would have never hurt him, that it was him who was acting like a madman behaving like that, but… Haizaki had reduced him to such a state when he had broken his cup, and when he let even senpai’s one fall… he couldn’t help himself! He really _didn’t want to_!

Nijimura pulled him to his chest again and started caressing his head slowly, trying to calm him down.

“Akashi, it’s not your fault,” he murmured. “If anything, it’s mine. We thought that keeping the promise we made to you at the hospital was the best way to make you understand you can trust at least us, but I didn’t think… Akashi, I’m sorry. I should have realized this solution was too much similar to… before. Forgive me.”

Seijuro sobbed between clenched teeth, trying to stop, to be stronger, but with scarce results. Nijimura’s hands stopped on his nape, and when the brunette resumed talking, there was something like a little smile in his voice.

“Akashi, there… there has always been another option. Well, honestly, everybody would be more than happy to take you in, but I think this would be the best solution for you.” Slowly, he detached the younger from himself and brushed his cheeks with his thumbs to dry them up a bit. “You’d be happier, definitely. And also, I won’t vanish into nothingness. I’ll come visiting like the others did up until now.” He searched for his eyes firmly. “I’m not chasing you out, Akashi. I want to do everything I can to help you feel better.”

And Seijuro didn’t have the strength to impose, so he simply nodded silently, always feeling worse by minute.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

He prepared his bag in a few minutes, and only then he realized he had never really unpacked it.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Nijimura was driving, silent, but Akashi could spy on him from time to time from the passenger seat beside him. He, too, had no idea as what to say, and in the end it was Shuuzou who spoke first.

“I called Aomine to warn him,” he grunted, hostile for some reason. “Obviously he immediately offered to host you, but I don’t think that trash bin that’s his house would be the best choice for you.”

In spite of himself, Seijuro frowned.

“Have you ever been there?” he asked slowly, trying to keep the talking going, grateful for the broken silence.

“No, but do you remember his lockers? Trust me, some things never change.”

Seijuro let a little smile escape his lips, but it vanished immediately, and Nijimura realized it.

“Kise offered, too, but I thought you’ve already been through enough. Living with him is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he kept on with fake casualness. “Momoi would poison you at the very first meal, and Murasakibara lives too far away to even think about it. Not to mention he would fatten you up like a pig in the timespan of a month.”

Akashi knew it was all just a well prepared diversion, just as he knew that his situation wasn’t exactly the best one, but he couldn’t not feel grateful for the attempt, and so he forced himself to laugh a bit, even if lowly, to each and every sarcastic remark of his captain.

“And Midorima?! Oh no, I refuse. He would keep you hooked up to an IV the whole day! How can that other idiot stand him? He’s the only one, I swear. Mr. Horoscope must be drugging him in secret to keep him close. If you notice, he’s always hyper, practically a second Kise! Damn, he probably gets high on caffeine.”

Shuuzou stopped talking at a red light, and for a moment he just stared at the light, but then he sighed.

Akashi was going to ask him what was happening, but he barely managed to say his name.

“Okay, listen,” Nijimura interrupted him, meeting his eyes but with a face that looked like he was swallowing animals’ feces. “You don’t have to take in consideration this hypothesis, you don’t even have to _think_ about it if you don’t want to and, trust me, you’ll have my full support.”

That was unexpected.

Seijuro blinked, confused, but the other had to move his gaze to resume his driving. The brunette took a long breath in between his teeth, but in the end he spat the words corroding his tongue.

“When you were hospitalized the second time, you father paid both the medical bills and the lawyers who took care to close everything without much noise and sparing you the tribunal,” he admitted, and it hurt to know that the bastard had done far more than what they managed to. “And when Kuroko was in Korea, he had been the one who managed to bring him back in Japan. Don’t ask me how, I have no idea. Even if, for what I got, it’s not like they get along much.”

Akashi stiffened at the mention of his parent. Masaomi’s cold face showed up in his mind, harsh and merciless as usual, and the image of how he had turned his back on him in the hospital, how he had left only money like that could clean his conscience, hit him hard. None of that seemed to coincide with Shuuzou’s words, and Seijuro gulped, unable to do anything else. Nijimura noticed it.

“I told you, you don’t even have to think about it if you don’t want to,” he repeated. “Be it because he’s an imbecile who doesn’t know how to handle you, because he’s not good at expressing feelings or because he doesn’t know how to act with an ‘imperfect’ child, I don’t give a fuck. I’m telling you this because when you were in the hospital the second time, and I warned him you would have come living with me, he said that if you’d have ever wished to go back home, you were free to do so. His exact words were ‘ _without conditions,_ ’ so I guess he meant that he has no intention of smashing you again into his perfect Akashi mold, but if you don’t want to trust him, I understand and agree with you wholeheartedly. If you want to go back with him, I’ll turn this car and bring you there because it’s your choice and because I’m the first who recognizes how important a fatherly figure can be for as much difficult as it may be to get along; but if you don’t want to, just pretend I never talked about that. Right now we’re going somewhere else, anyway.”

Seijuro was silent, thinking. His father letting him stay without demanding of him a picture of absolute perfection, worrying for his wellbeing more than for the family name, giving him a free _choice_ without conditions… He couldn’t believe it, maybe because he had deluded himself too many times already, and he was tired of carving his own flesh with new scars that would never heal.

Shougo made huge damages, but sometimes Akashi wondered if his father hadn’t done some just as big.

“Where are we going?” he asked in the end, lowly, and so he managed to hear the relieved sigh of his driver.

Nijimura lit up a turning signal and smiled a bit.

“We’re going to the Kurokos' house.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi knew Tetsuya was living on his own in a flat since his grandma had entered a retirement home because his parents travelled a lot due to his mother’s job. Thus he stood motionless in front of Shuuzou’s car door, his bag on a shoulder and eyes fixed on the little two-story house in perfect traditional style. It was in pale colours, with flowers at the windows and a little garden all around filled with an happy barking, and on the doorstep was appearing a very young couple, side by side with Nijimura.

Tetsuya was already halfway through the alley, and in a moment he was before him. Somehow, seeing those blue orbs managed to reassure Seijuro enough to make him drop his stiff shoulders a bit.

“Are you okay?” Kuroko asked immediately, and Akashi smiled weakly as he nodded.

The other didn’t seem to really believe him, and yet asked nothing and simply outstretched a hand to delicately hold his. Seijuro stared at their intertwined fingers, remembering of all the times they had already done that same gesture, and he managed not to tremble, but as he followed Tetsuya, he looked worriedly at the other’s parents whom he had never met before.

“They won’t eat you” was the immediate comment of the phantom, and Akashi wondered how he knew but didn’t ask.

The Kurokos had passed down a lot to their kid. The mother had the same blue hair, so long that the braid on her shoulder reached a palm’s length under her breast, and the same shade of baby blue in her slightly sharper eyes. A simple glance to the father’s grey ones let Seijuro know that the shape came from him. The woman had the same vague smile of the usual Tetsuya, but the man had the wide and bright one of the special occasions, under black short hair that looked just as wild as the son’s bedhead. The lips came from the dad, the nose from the mom. The two of them were really close, sharing their living spaces like a single one, and their child didn’t hesitate in dragging him straight before them.

“Akashi Seijuro,” he said without any intonation, “this is my father, Haru, and my mother, Kyoko.”

Akashi bowed formally, praying not to ruin everything at least this time.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Seijuro’s room was on the second floor, beside Tetsuya’s and in front of his parent’s, and it was in the west corner of the building, so it was blessed with two windows that in those afternoon hours let in a lot of light. It was slightly bigger than Shuuzou’s and had a desk, a drawer beside a wardrobe, and a kotatsu lying against the wall. The tatami gave a good feeling, and Akashi stood for a while on his feet in the middle of the room, curling and relaxing his toes in the white socks.

“Akashi-kun.” Seijuro didn’t jerk, recognizing the voice, and Tetsuya smiled a bit, almost imperceptibly. “Do you need help?”

He turned again, going back to observe the room, but shrugged. He was sure he could do it on his own, he had a single bag after all, but deep inside he was wondering if he would really place his things around or if he would do exactly like with Shuuzou and leave everything where it was, waiting to be chased out.

Kuroko seemed to understand and walked slowly in. He was wearing a long-sleeved azure pullover on a white shirt and jeans, but his best accessory was the way his eyes shone in the light blades cutting the air.

“It will get better, Akashi-kun,” he promised lowly Then his smile grew a bit clearer. “I have great expectations.”

Seijuro smiled despite everything, recognizing the words he had so many times told the other, but it was a brief moment before his mind cancelled that little amusement to remind him of how insignificant and disgusting he was and how big would inevitably be the disappointment he was going to give to Tetsuya. 

Kuroko surprised him, kindly covering the hand holding the bag with his and carefully forcing him to let it go. He knelt on the ground, and Seijuro observed him opening the zipper before raising his eyes on him.

“There’s no need to rush, Akashi-kun. One step at time is more than enough.”

Seijuro thought about it for a long time, before finding the courage to kneel in front of his friend.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Kuroko’s mother called them down for dinner as Tetsuya was showing him Nigou, the husky puppy that had been Seirin’s mascot was still young, but definitely not little. Under Seijuro’s bewildered eyes, the dog jumped on his master to lick his face, and the guy had quite some troubles not to fall with all that weight. 

At Kyoko’s voice both the young men were distracted, and Nigou took advantage of the moment to try to win the new guest’s affection.

Seijuro barely managed to turn before the beast jumped on his chest and made him fall miserably on his butt.

“No! Nigou, down!” Tetsuya ordered, and the dog obeyed, but not before leaving quite the amount of drool on Akashi’s face.

Akashi, though, surprised everyone by suddenly laughing.

They were both sent to wash themselves with a single sigh from the Kuroko's house mistress.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi had a nightmare that night, only one of the many. For the whole month at the hospital and every single night at Shuuzou’s house, he had never slept peacefully since Haizaki’s death. To be honest, he could not do it very well even before. 

He dreamt about the night he had killed Shougo, dreamt the blows and the curses, the blood on his hands and on the floor and on his boyfriend, the scissors in his back, but he even dreamt that the other wouldn’t stop. Seijuro was stabbing and stabbing and stabbing him, repeatedly, but it was like he didn’t even exist, and even if the other’s eyes were cold and empty and unfocused, his hands kept on falling on Tetsuya’s thin body, ripping cries out of it, ‘till when it, finally, stopped moving. Only then did Shougo fall too, face first, lifeless, and Akashi found himself alone drowning in a sea of blood.

He screamed, and he probably did in reality, too, because suddenly his eyes shot open, and two little yet firm hands were on his shoulders.

He was panting, terrified and sweaty, but in the end in the corridor light coming through the thin paper walls, he managed to recognize Tetsuya’s lively and worried face. Without thinking, instinctively, he sat up and stretched his arms to hug him in relief. Everybody had told him, but that was the first time he had dreamt what would have happened had he not stopped Shougo, and something in his chest was refusing to let go of that nightmare because it was so _possible._ They had been just so close to letting it become reality. And yet, he had _killed a person_ to stop that!

Kuroko held him carefully, without forcing him to keep the contact if he didn’t want to, and he stood silent waiting for the other’s erratic breathing to calm down and for his body to stop trembling.

Seijuro gulped heavily.

“ _Whore,_ ” he whispered, and Tetsuya widened his eyes, lowering his face to look at him, but the other was keeping the crown of the head pressed against his chest and the face toward the floor, as if hiding. Kuroko realized he was crying only when he felt something fall on his bent knees. “ _Whore, whore, whore…_ ” Akashi didn’t stop murmuring, like a chant. “He kept on calling me that, whatever happened. If things at work were bad, if he didn’t like dinner, if he was drunk and suddenly the colour of my shirt was irritating him, he…” He sobbed lowly. “ _You’re just a whore, you’re a disgusting whore, damn whore, whores like your should just shut up and suck, whore, whore, whor-_ ”

“Seijuro.” Kuroko’s firm voice interrupted his confession, and even if stone-hard, it came sugared by the caress he laid on his nape. “That’s enough. Let Haizaki take all of his curses to his grave. You don’t have to endure nor believe in them.” The arm around Akashi’s shoulders held him tighter, like affection wrapped itself around his first name, whispered with the same naturalness of years before when they were together and as if all that had happened in between that times and the present hadn’t changed Tetsuya’s opinion of him in the slightest. Indeed, it didn’t. “You’re nothing like that.”

Akashi clenched his fists tighter in the pajama shirt of the chest he was lying against, but he jerked all the same when a delicate knocking at the door made them both turn. Only after a second did he recognize a woman’s frame behind the rice paper, leaving something on the corridor floor.

“I’ve made some tisane, guys,” Kyoko murmured, and Seijuro widened his eyes, but she turned and vanished, probably in her room, without adding anything.

“Mom is a software programmer, but she said she’ll work at home for a while,” Kuroko whispered lowly. “My dad’s a psychotherapist instead, but you don’t have to talk to him as a patient if you don’t want to.” When Akashi lifted his eyes a bit, Tetsuya smiled lightly. “Would you like some tisane now?”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi had trouble meeting Kyoko’s eyes the following morning, but she talked to him naturally instead, as if nothing had happened. She had the same refreshing and bright voice of her son, but more emotional, even when she offered Seijuro a bowl of rice and demanded that he didn’t hold himself back and eat to his heart’s content. She and Tetsuya exchanged a few words during breakfast and openly ignored the way Haru, husband and father, ran into the kitchen yelling and randomly grabbing something to eat before running out again.

Akashi blinked a couple of times, but when he moved his eyes back on the other Kuroko man, this one shrugged simply.

“He’s late one day out of three,” Tetsuya answered nonchalantly.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Maybe it was the way Haru managed to mediate in every little domestic conflict or how he struggled to hold by the leash the exuberant husky who refused to obey him; maybe it was his perfect score of attempted punctuality every three days or the fact that Tetsuya and he laid to read on the couch in the same exact position but at the opposite sides of it, but still it remained that the man looked like everything but a psychologist, and thus Akashi managed slowly to build a relationship.

Haru was a rare beast from his point of view, a father who’d interrupt everything he was doing if his son asked for him or who stole from his more-than-twenty-years-old-child’s dish the vegetables he didn’t like, trying not to get caught by the mother – keyword: _trying_ – and somehow that attracted Seijuro without him realizing.

After some months in the new situation, Tetsuya was hired in a kindergarten, and Akashi found himself often alone with Kyoko, who worked in her studio. Haru usually came home before his son, and it was while waiting for the other that one day the man knocked at the door of Seijuro’s room.

“May I?” he asked with a bright smile, and the guy let him without thinking twice, a bit anxious.

He was reading, sitting at the kotatsu, but he immediately closed the volume as soon as the man reached him, and Haru surprised him by sitting on the floor before him.

“I just wanted to talk a little with you, Akashi-kun,” he said, and Seijuro stiffened a bit, but he pretended he didn’t. A voice in his head, one that wasn’t his other, yelled at him that he was going to be chased away again, that nobody wanted a disgusting broken madman like him. “Would you like to go to university?”

_What?_

The expression of his face must have been clear as day because Haru shook his head but smiling.

“I’ll be very happy when you’ll finally understand that nobody will ever ask you to leave this place,” he commented calmly, but then he crossed his arms on the table and shrugged. “Kyoko and I talked about it, and lately you look better. You go out more often and not only with the others; for example, you went to take groceries alone yesterday, and you made it perfectly, without attacks. We just wanted you to know that if you’ll ever decide to keep on studying, as I think you wanted to when you were in high school, we’d be happy to help you.”

Akashi couldn’t understand. Was he talking seriously? He, at school again? At University? Sure, the idea was tempting, but the embarrassment and shame paralyzed him completely. How could he show up there three, almost four, years later than everybody else, without any reason – or at least, none that he wanted to share? He knew he couldn’t keep on living at the Kurokos’ place without doing anything, but…

“Akashi-kun.” Haru outstretched a hand to him, but stopped it on the table, not touching him without permission, only to call his eyes back on him. “I’m asking if you _would like_ to do it. Don’t think about anything else; just tell me if studying would help you back on your feet.”

“No.” Seijuro lowered his gaze, conscious of the disappointment he would have seen otherwise. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it.”

And he froze, waiting for yells or accusations or declarations of shame or even an order to leave because he knew he surely couldn’t stay without giving back anything.

“Okay.” For the second time, Akashi stared at Haru with eyes wide open, but again the other shrugged. “It was a question, and you answered, the end. I’m glad you were honest.” He smiled again, of the same bright smile of his son. “But then, Akashi-kun, I would have a favour to ask you for tomorrow.”

Seijuro frowned, but shrugged without thinking. When he realized he had involuntarily imitated the man, he blushed a bit but cleared his voice.

“What can I help you with, Kuroko-san?” he asked politely.

Haru’s face took the same expression he wore when he was apologizing to his wife for leaving the room a mess in his rush of the ‘late mornings.’

“You’re good at shogi, right?”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

It came out that a colleague of Haru had challenged him, and he had accepted despite never playing in his whole life. Akashi gave it his best in a single day, and Tetsuya’s father was all but stupid. He even seemed to be skilled for the game, but the guy couldn’t make him into even a vague threat for a veteran. 

And Matsumoto Keiji, a man with white hair and thick glasses but without beard so that his face at every wrong move of his opponent was extremely visible, definitely _was_ a veteran.

They were in one of the rooms at the main Shogi Dojo in Tokyo, where the players could challenge each other to train or to prepare for a tournament, and Seijuro had felt _bad_ when Haru had parked in front of the building, saying it was where he had been given the appointment.

The embarrassment for being the third wheel at the match and for being alone with Tetsuya’s father, the anxiety for the people all around him and the mixture of worry and fear he always felt when he had to _talk_ with a stranger had vanished in front of the knowledge of the imminent carnage. Feeling on the edge of his seat for Haru, he had sat beside the board and observed the fight going on even worse than his most awful predictions. If the whole match was longer than two minutes, it was because the opponent was choosing to spare his enemy’s life from time to time. Seijuro would have thought it was to drag on the man’s agony, but Haru was just smiling peacefully as if oblivious to the situation.

Suddenly, when the man tried to move the last piece he had as his king’s defense, Akashi bent to grab his hand instinctively, as he had done during the training matches.

Haru looked at him in surprise, and he blushed a bit and retreated, apologizing for interrupting the game, but Matsumoto shushed him with a gesture of his hand.

“Preventing a suicide is always a good gesture, kid,” he said before staring at Haru in disappointment. “I thought you said you were good.”

The man kept on smiling, ignoring the confusion of the guy beside him.

“I thought it would have been easier if Seijuro were to tutor me.” Akashi jerked a bit hearing his first name being used so suddenly, but Matsumoto’s eyes were rapidly on him. Right before he turned to the man, he caught something in Haru’s face, like a sparkle that was all but innocent and naïve, and before he could open his mouth, Tetsuya’s father had already preceded him. “He is honestly very good at this game.”

Akashi blinked, confused, but the look from the more expert player was already on him, studying with attention and craving. Matsumoto might have been old, but he had the same will to fight as a young man, and all of a sudden that last minute request, the place, the words, everything took a different light as the youngest of the three found himself staring at Haru in shock. It couldn’t be… It couldn’t be that the man had organized everything just to push him to play Shogi professionally again, right?

“I’d like to play with him, then, if he’s really this skilled, Kuroko-san.”

Even if the words came from the other man, Akashi glared at Haru, something he would have never dared to do just a month before, but the other smiled at him as he moved aside to leave his seat open. In the end, under those two gazes, the guy gave up and moved to the other side of the board to finish the match.

Seijuro started without nine pieces – already lost – that included a Gold General, both the Horses, a Lance, and the Tower. He won that match and the next four.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi coughed as Haru patted his back, laughed when Kyoko prepared tofu that night to celebrate his victory, and he didn’t tremble as Tetsuya, on the doorstep of his room, kissed his cheek lightly before vanishing into his own for the night.

_One step at time_ , Seijuro thought, remembering his words.

Somehow, he felt like walking again.

 


	16. Epilogue

**__Epilogue__ **

Akashi grunted when a loud knocking at the door woke him up, but he still opened his eyes, pushed by the vague feeling that it must be something important. And he found before his eyes the placid sleeping face of Tetsuya, with a hand firmly wrapped around _his_ arm that during the night had been reclaimed as a pillow.

Seijuro took a moment to shiver from the proximity, but no voice in his head accused him of lack of trust. He let the fear fade away on its own, and in the meanwhile he moved his eyes to the other’s wild bed-head.

He was still lost in those intricate arabesques when someone knocked again, finally succeeding in making him turn to spy on the figure of a man behind the door.

“Seijuro, I’ll pretend not to know that Tetsuya is there, so I’ll tell you from out here that it’s time to get up,” Haru grumbled. “The tournament begins in two and a half hours, and you and Kyoko have yet to retrieve your kimono from the laundry.”

Akashi grunted again, but this time someone else imitated him.

Tetsuya opened his eyes to meet his; then he smiled a bit.

“Good morning.”

“Why is your father always late himself, but far too punctual when it comes to others?”

Kuroko shook his head at the acid in Seijuro’s voice, but then he pulled the blankets of the futon off both their bodies, and he moved on his knees to look at the other. Akashi decided that the gesture would have been far more intimidating had he not been wearing an embarrassing t-shirt with a teal rabbit and track pants, not to mention his usual and awful bed hair, but then he smiled, knowing that Tetsuya had put on the first things he had found in the darkness before sneaking into his room and his bed.

He, too, was completely dressed, with a short sleeved t-shirt and black pants, and he sat up with an offended muttering under the other’s gaze.

They hadn’t done anything, not that night nor any of the others during the past five months, but they had reached some improvements. Seijuro could keep control of his panic attacks and talked with shop assistants calmly when he was accompanying Kyoko to do shopping, and he had learned how to suffocate the little spasms of fear that sometimes still took him when he had to face unknown adversaries.

He was a professional Shogi player who was quickly climbing back to the top. Even if he had ‘started’ only five months before, he was already considered the best in all of Tokyo, and the tournament of that day would allow him to start playing even outside the prefecture. If he won, obviously; a thing that he had resumed taking almost as a given. He still kept in mind Tetsuya and the defeat against Seirin, but now he was using it as a means not to underestimate anybody, and his style of game grew sharper and sneakier every day.

Midorima one day had told him he made the board look like a terrarium filled with sand from where suddenly a snake would come out, inexorable, to grind his victim while staring at it straight in the eyes. Akashi was quite proud of that.

“ _Sei._ ” Tetsuya’s scolding voice made him finally get up and reach for the wardrobe to pull out some clothes, so even the phantom got up and reached for the door. “I should go before my father comes back.”

“Your father makes no sense,” Seijuro retorted, but he didn’t undress while the other was still in the room. “He knows you’re here, so why does he keep on pretending not to?”

Kuroko shot him a look that was a clear hint not to ask questions. Then he slipped out in the corridor, and Akashi stared at his figure through the rice paper.

Tetsuya was a blessing. He was digging through his wall slowly, but with no violence. He was more like a patient wave caressing him ceaselessly, every time taking away some crumbles from his shell. He kissed his cheek, that was the furthest they had reached, but then he would join him at night. They would sleep in front of each other, curled up, as equals, and he would reassure him when nightmares came, never asking anything in return. They were taking it more than slow, but Akashi had learned that hurrying himself, striving to accept something he wasn’t ready for and keeping in how he felt, would only worsen it all.

Now, when he felt bad, he asked for some time. He took a moment to calm down and then went to Tetsuya or Haru and talked about that. The first one listened silently and was the one he confided the things that hurt or oppressed him, only to throw them out; the second one asked discrete questions as if accompanying him hand in hand through an intricate forest and helping him to realize on his own where the truth laid. Thus, he was the one he went to when old doubts came back to haunt him.

To Tetsuya, he had told how Shougo had forced him to learn how to smoke, the way he had forced the cigarette through his lips, promising to extinguish it on his tongue had he not breathed properly. To Haru, he had told about when he had run from home and how Haizaki had welcomed him in apparently without asking anything in return, and only when he talked did he realize just how much that hospitality had indeed cost him.

Kyoko was the post-therapy. She waited for him in the kitchen or in the living room with tea or sweets and started talking about little things like the neighbours or that program she was working on. She asked him if he could help her bring Nigou to the vet or to accompany her to buy groceries. She scolded him because he never ate enough or she tried to fix his hair, grumbling about her son’s as well because neither hairstyle would get tamed.

Akashi was twenty-one, closer to twenty-two, but he still needed time. Haizaki had taken away from him more than he would have ever thought he’d let anybody steal and getting used to a normal life again was a long and difficult process.

And Tetsuya was beside him, silent and unnoticeable as always, with his unreadable face and a little mischievous smile hiding in his eyes.

Seijuro shook his head and went to the bathroom with clothes in his hands.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

“You could have at least told Nijimura-kun." 

Akashi rolled his eyes as he put on his seatbelt, but then he glared at Haru as the other started the car.

“Nijimura-senpai hates everything that forces him to stand still for more than five consecutive minutes,” he replied. “A Shogi tournament is definitely not to his tastes.”

“Midorima-kun, then,” Mister Kuroko insisted with his eyes fixed on the road. “He likes to play.”

“He has a shift at the hospital ‘till this evening. They apparently managed to force him into the shift of an ill colleague.” Seijuro sighed. “He will never learn.”

“Too soft under the peel.”

“Exactly.”

“… Aomine-kun?”

“Haru-san, please, think about driving.”

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Tetsuya and Kyoko spied on the leaving car from the kitchen window; then they exchanged a look.

“I’ll be there to see that tournament, no matter what it takes,” the woman declared, and Tetsuya smiled briefly, almost only to himself, before resuming his apathetic face.

“I’m sure Sei would be happy to see us there,” he commented, but _mentally_ he frowned when he noticed his mother had stopped with her hand still in her purse. “Mother?”

Kyoko sighed, resuming her search for whatever was her target, but she ended up talking.

“Tecchan, you… you aren’t rushing things, right?” she asked, a bit hesitant. “I’m not saying I don’t trust you, but maybe it’s still soon for…”

“Mother.” Tetsuya’s hand laid gently on the woman’s, almost as vague as the light in his eyes. “It’s not like that. We sleep and sometimes hold hands, nothing more. Sei is not ready yet.”

Kyoko stared intently at her son’s face.

“You know he may never be, don’t you?” she asked lowly. None of them wanted to believe that, but the truth was that Seijuro had been through hell, and it was already a miracle that he had made it back in one piece. It wasn’t possible to demand that he remain the one they used to know.

Tetsuya knew that. It hurt, but he knew. He could read it in the other’s eyes every single day, but every single day, at the same time, Akashi seemed to be taking back one piece of himself.

“This is already enough,” he murmured, a bit to his mother and a bit to himself, and the woman caressed his head, smiling bitterly.

“You wanted to leave home as soon as you graduated high school and ended up living on your own in your third year of middle school,” she commented, a laugh barely restrained. “And now instead you’re a perfectly independent adult, and yet you’re still here with us.”

Tetsuya shrugged, hiding the amusement that was softening his features, and he moved to grab his jacket.

“Sei is not ready to move in with a lover, and I don’t want to leave him alone.” _Even if you and dad are here, it would be another abandonment that could hurt him too much._ He didn’t say it out loud, but Kyoko understood all the same and nodded.

She reached for him and grabbed her own coat, but then she smiled, showing her son the car keys.

“Let’s go watch Seijuro win everything,” she declared, and Tetsuya rolled his eyes but followed her.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

 

Akashi had turned to check that Haru hadn’t broken his neck stumbling somewhere, but he hadn’t expected to find him sitting beside a focused and apathetically rooting Tetsuya and an interested Kyoko. Even more shocking was the sight of _Ryouta_ and _Daiki_ behind them, even if the first looked like a five-year-old in desperate need of the toilet and the second was already bored to death. Not to mention the suspicious lunch box in Momoi’s hands that made him silently thank the gods for the meal he had already brought for himself.

_There was no need for them all to come_ , he thought with a sigh, but then he turned back to the board and found himself smiling a bit.

He won all the matches without breaking a sweat.

 

_This Ain’t Love_

Momoi trying to force Daiki to gulp down her lunch, Kise laughing for he had been spared the hellish meal with the excuse of his model diet, Haru and Kyoko talking among themselves as they checked the classifications, and Tetsuya brushing his hand carefully with the back of his.

Akashi was sitting on a bench right outside the hall that had hosted the tournament and was smiling as he observed the situations around him. The phone in his hand was buzzing with congratulatory messages for his victory, even if Midorima had specified that his was just a simple courtesy due to Takao’s insistence, and Nijimura had muttered that congratulations were useless since the final result had been decided at the very moment of his signing up.

Maybe a bit drunk from all the positive feelings he was experiencing, Seijuro forced himself to risk a bit, and with the same indifference he could use to move a piece on the board, he moved his hand over Tetsuya’s, and instead of brushing their backs, he let their palms hug entwining their fingers.

Kuroko barely shot a look at the tangle of holding, but then he quickly averted his gaze. But not soon enough to hide the happiness emanating from his blank face, and Akashi smiled at that stubborn mask.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and Tetsuya looked at him for a second before giving up and bending the corners of his mouth upward a little.

Seijuro observed him bending slightly forward, searching for his cheek with his lips, and he waited for the contact that…

_Big brother. We’re more than this._

Akashi widened his eyes a bit when his head turned and his mouth went to meet Tetsuya’s, and a lightening of fear ran down his spine for a second before he noticed the shocked expression on the phantom’s face.

_Are you scared of him, Big brother? For real?_

Akashi blinked as the voice of his other self vanished into a corner of his mind, and he looked for Kuroko’s face to read all the confusion of the world there. He was almost _cute_.

Was he scary? No. Did he really think he could hurt him? No.

Did he want that?

Nobody seemed to have noticed the little gesture, and Seijuro paid it no mind. He hid the fear under the carpet of trust he was laying in Tetsuya, bent forward again, and laid another little kiss on the phantom’s lips, this time waiting long enough to taste his lower lip briefly before retreating.

Kuroko let him do so gently, but when Akashi looked at him again, he was smiling the same smile of his father, huge and bright enough to out-shadow all the lights in the building.

At a certain point, he smiled, too.

_One step at time._

**_The End_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh. My. Gosh.
> 
> I honestly can't believe I'm here, after those fifteen months working on this story, but I'm so happy to have finished this! I really held it dear, for more than a reason.
> 
> Now, uhm... I'm glad this story was well received despite the delicate topics it revolves around. I honestly thank every single one of you for being so kind to me. The comments, kudos and messages on Tumblr made me honestly happy and I will never be able to express how glad I am.
> 
> That said, as someone already knows, I'm turning this story into a series. The title will be "Take care of me" for of all the story it will contain, which will be seven or eight (more probably eight) if everything goes as planned ^^", every single one will resolve around one specific member of the Generation of Miracles - and affiliated, because one story will be about Momoi and the eighth probably about Nijimura -. The common denominator will be that the protagonist will go through some bad things - and you know I'm pretty imaginative when it comes to bad things - and the others will help him/her getting out of those. 
> 
> This one was Akashi's, the next one will be Kuroko's - no break for my poor lovely babies -.
> 
> The stories will be all in the same "universe" so there will be references to others in each of them. Because of this, I'm still working on the details of times and all. I will probably soon post Kuroko's story first chapter, but then wait for a while before updating. I will be done with my exams in four days so from then on I'll be able to write more.
> 
> Well, that was just to tell you that if you're interested you'll have to keep an eye out for me ;D
> 
> The biggest thanks is for Eve, whom this story is gifted to, for she's always been there to support me, she endured my awful grammar and beta checked every chapter to spare you her same suffering and is, overall, simply an amazing person. Thank you, Eve!
> 
> Nothing much to add. I like how this turned out to, I'm glad all the time I've spent on it gave some results and I hope it will leave you all something, even if it is just a simple fan fiction.
> 
> See you (hopefully) soon!,
> 
> Agap

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks a lot to eveismypenname/EvesMagick who is the beta for this story and puts up with my sadism and endless cruelty. I'm gifting you this because I'm so glad I get to know you!
> 
> See you!
> 
> Agap
> 
> P.S. Find me on Tumblr too at agapantoblu.tumblr.com


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